FAQ Main Sections:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Seven most popular questions

Note: be sure to check our news/blog site for late-breaking announcements, server and bug reports, status updates, etc.

1. My daily totals have mysteriously dropped over the past few weeks (January/February 2008), perhaps related to your new policy of 'visits instead of hits or page views'. Can you explain?

See the comment below about 'What exactly is a visit, and how does it compare with hit, page view and session?', which also links to a specific news/blog posting.

2. I see a note saying "This map was (or will be) archived", or I've noticed that my lovely dots are gone. What does this mean?

See the comment below about map archives.

3. I see 'Visits on previous day: 0' (or a surprisingly large number). Why?

See comments below for the explanation, and also please refer to the commentary on our news/blog site which has a faster update cycle than this FAQ page.

4. Can you clarify your privacy policy and whether you use any 'cookies' or 'spyware'?

No cookies, no spyware: guaranteed! Read all about it in our blog posting which links onwards to our privacy policy statement.

5. MySpace users: Why does my code change or look like a funny ".." after I edit my profile or blog in MySpace, even after following your instructions?

MySpace changes the way it traps user-provided HTML from time to time, and has very specific terms and conditions of service that we want to adhere to. The best way to keep up with the techniques for installing ClustrMaps on MySpace is to check our specific comments on the MySpace portion of our companion ClustrMaps news/blog site. Also check our most recent news postings.

6. Can I change my email address or URL and keep all the dots and data?

You can now (as of June 2008) change your email address, and we will soon (July 2008) be allowing self-change of URLs, but in the meantime we recommend starting afresh with new dots unless you want to deploy a special 'workaround'. See full instructions for both email and URL changes below.

7. My map says 'Updates begin tomorrow', but this has been the case for several days. What has happened?

A 2-or 3-day turnaround is sometimes possible. See explanation below.

 

Map error message

I get the following error when trying to view a large world map:


couldn't connect to the mysql server...
the database is over-loaded at the moment, please try again later
.... not a ClustrMaps (reg or +) user

On occasion we have observed a processing bottleneck that causes this error. Rest assured that if you are already a registered user, with an already-running thumbnail map, you are STILL a correctly-registered user, and the third line of the error message, 'not a ClustrMaps (reg or +) user' is just an artefact of this error condition. Normally you should be able to try again within 15 minutes, but if that fails then you should try again within 24 hours. Be assured that your maps and data and visitor counts are all kept intact, so nothing will be lost. The overall architecture is generally very robust, but things can get pretty busy and it will probably take another iteration or two as we continue to scale up! We will also move to more informative messages at some stage.

 

Password, registration, subscription problems

Can I change my URL and keep all the dots and data?

Yes, it is now a do-it-yourself operation. See full instructions below.

 

I registered but never received the email with my password to get the HTML. What should I do?

We send out a new password to newly-registered users immediately, from an address at clustrmaps.com that has a very obvious subject line (such as 'first password'). There are several possible causes of your email not being received, and note that most of these causes will also prevent us from being able to help you by email! (The cause of the problem will also block any personal help we may send you.) Therefore, please read the following very carefully:

 

My password fails. What should I do?

There are normally two possibilities, concerning the URL and the password, as follows::

 

How do I cancel a paying ClustrMaps+ subscription?

For those who are already paying a monthly or annual fee for a ClustrMaps+ account, you can go through the following steps you need to cancel (from the PayPal Help Center):

  1. Log in to your PayPal account.
  2. Click the History subtab.
  3. Choose the Subscriptions field from the Show dropdown menu.
  4. Check the From box and change the date back as far as you need.
  5. Click Search.
  6. To view the details of a specific Subscription Creation, click Details in the Details column.
  7. At the bottom of this page, click Cancel Subscription.
  8. On the confirmation page, click Cancel Subscription again.

In any event, you can always contact the ClustrMaps Team who will sort it out for you!

 

Putting the HTML on my site, valid HTML, changing URL or email

Where and how I do insert the HTML for my thumbnail map, when using a specific blogging service such as Blogger, AOL Journal, MySpace, MSN Spaces, Windows Live, or TypePad?

First, you should have a look at our

In addition, we use a dedicated del.icio.us log/feed/page to store a link to articles by ClustrMaps users who provide exactly such advice, including 'How to install your ClustrMaps'! Check out the link collection below:

Finally check our News site for any late-breaking updates.

 

My thumbnail map has weird text such as: onError="this.onError=null ....

This text should not be displayed on your website, so read the following carefully.

First of all, you need to double-check that you have copied and pasted 100% of the code shown on your ClustrMaps Admin page.

Next, you need to be aware that with most website or blog editing tools, there are two 'views' of a page you can have:

a) WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), all nicely formatted like the page will REALLY look to the outside world (this is called 'Compose' mode in Blogger, for example)

b) 'raw' HTML, what the page looks like internally (this is called 'Edit Html' mode in Blogger, for example)

If you see strange characters or text above, below, or near your thumbnail map, it is highly likely that you pasted the map thumbnail code into view (a), whereas in reality it will only work properly if you can enter it into view (b) !! You can confirm that you have view (b) when you are editing your page because everything else on your page should also look like HTML, with lots of angle-brackets! Note that even view (b) can introduce unwanted anomalies, as explained further below.

Another indicator that something is wrong is if your editor or site management tool is inserting lots of extra characters into your page, e.g. "&lt" and "&gt" (which are the codes for the '<' and '>' symbols).

If you compare the relevant section of HTML on your web page with exactly what is on your own ClustrMaps Admin page, you'll see all sorts of differences right away upon close inspection... see if there's a way to get that correct HTML from your ClustrMaps Admin page back onto your site without having it 'interpreted', i.e. you need to have it pasted in there literally!

If you still have HTML problems even after double-checking, here are two more suggestions:

1. Even in view (b), i.e. 'raw' HTML, your editing tools my introduce unexpected artifacts. For example, in Blogger, there is an option (under the tab called Settings... Formatting... ) called "Convert line breaks", which can force a "<br/>" to appear in the middle of some delicate ClustrMaps HTML code that results in the unwanted display (look at the actual page in a separate browser window and use View... Source to confirm this). You can try disabling this option and republishing, or, if that causes even more havoc to other items on your site, manually delete any remaining line breaks from that bit of HTML code, and republish just your posting.

2. Even better, don't use ClustrMaps thumbnail maps directly within a blog posting: stick it in the 'sidebar' or 'header' or 'footer' of your site or blog! For more advice on how to do this, have a look at our blog-service-specific instructions.

 

I registered with top-level domain http://mysite.mycompany.com, but want to put the map on a page where users are more likely to go, e.g. http://mysite.mycompany.com/blog. Will the ClustrMaps counters still do the right thing?

YES, ClustMaps will 'do the right thing': as long as the map itself (i.e. the HTML code we provided that 'dishes out the thumbnail map') is accessed/displayed somehow (no matter what route is used to get to it), then the counter will be correctly updated... so you should put that code right on the page you prefer people to visit. For example, consider the case of a personal blog, which displays a ClustrMaps thumbnail map in the upper right. To save putting the map everywhere, those few crucial lines of HTML from ClustrMaps are simply put in one place (for example, using Wordpress, they would go in a Wordpress theme folder in the file 'sidebar.php') so that it correctly appears on every blog page, no matter HOW the user actually reaches it. Thus, if one visitor reads a specific blog article from Australia, and a second visitor reads a different specific blog article from Canada, those two dots will still correctly appear on the single home page map the next time the map is updated.

 

Can I change email address or URL?

As of June 2008, if you want to change your registered email address, you can do this by going to your personal 'Admin' page, logging in as usual (with your URL and password), and clicking on the 'Change personal details' button, as highlighted below:

Changing personal details

At this point you will be prompted for the email address you wish to change to, and you must (re)enter your existing password for confirmation.

If you want to change the URL you are using, until we make this possible (expected July 2008), we recommend starting afresh with new dots unless you want to deploy a special 'workaround'. You can actually choose between two routes, the second of which is the 'workaround' method:

1. Start all over again just by registering your new domain as a brand new ClustrMaps user (for 'ClustrMaps+' users we can apply the same '+' status to your new account as long as you email us to let us know, but your dots would start afresh with the new account). The advantage is that this is nice and simple. The old one will just remain unused, 'fade away' and we will eventually delete it from our records. Even for those worried about 'losing' all their precious dots and totals, we have found that in the long run it is fine, because your new map will have its own life and its own starting date, so this will be very clear to anyone looking at the map.

2. Keep the same registered URL, and use exatly the suggested HTML code from your first (old) site on your second (new) site! The disadvantage is that the URL may look weird or confusing to anyone inspecting the code, but it will work fine, and in fact it will record the dots correctly on your new site, as long as the thumbnail map is correctly displayed.

 

I have a site where the thumbnail map appears on multiple pages (e.g. discussion forum, but also other sites) and is generating far too many dots on the map. What should I do?

If your site has many pages where the same thumbnail map appears (for example a discussion forum, but this is equally true for any site that that has many different pages but the same thumbnail map is used), you may be generating a 'misleading' number of 'dots on maps': you really get one dot PER PAGE VIEW, so that if a single blog or forum user reads 10 different blog postings or forum messages, that will count as 10 visits, because each forum message uses the same 'sidebar' or 'footer' code to display those links, ads, and ClustrMaps, regardless of where the user is. You might want to consider creating two independent 'sidebar' ('side column PHP code') or 'footer' ('bottom of page PHP code') routines that are almost identical, but one displays everything INCLUDING the ClustrMaps thumbnail (and any other hit counters you may choose to use, of course), whereas the other displays everything EXCEPT the ClustrMaps thumbnail map. That way, you would get a more accurate tally of the number of visitors because the thumbnail map would 'capture' those who came in through the 'front door' page. Obviously, it would miss expert users who went straight in to a 'deeper page', but on balance this is a tradeoff that many ClustrMaps users prefer, because it is more representative of the total number visitors.

If you are using a PHP-based blog or discussion forum, below are two variations of some PHP code that you can use in place of the HTML provided by us (thanks to enthusiastic user Fabrizio Parrella for this):

VERSION 1, for users who have HTML code that contains http://clustrmaps.com within it:

<?php
$_cfg['url'] = '?????'; //replace ????? with the part of your URL after the "http://"
$_cfg['timeout'] = 3600; //how many seconds before count the next hit from the same user
?>
<a href="http://clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://<?=$_cfg['url']?>" id="clustrMapsLink" target="_blank"><?php
if(!isset($_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout']) || $_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout']<(time()-$_cfg['timeout'])){
$_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout'] = time();
?><img src="http://clustrmaps.com/counter/index2.php?url=http://<?=$_cfg['url']?>" border="1" alt="Locations of visitors to this page (counting)" title="Locations of visitors to this page (counting)" /><?php
} else {
?><img src="http://clustrmaps.com/stats/maps-no_clusters/<?=$_cfg['url']?>-thumb.jpg" border="1" alt="Locations of visitors to this page (no counting)" title="Locations of visitors to this page (no counting)" /><?php
}
?></a>

VERSION 2, for users who have HTML code that contains http://www2.clustrmaps.com within it:

<?php
$_cfg['url'] = '?????'; //replace ????? with the part of your URL after the "http://"
$_cfg['timeout'] = 3600; //how many seconds before count the next hit from the same user
?>
<a href="http://www2.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://<?=$_cfg['url']?>" id="clustrMapsLink" target="_blank"><?php
if(!isset($_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout']) || $_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout']<(time()-$_cfg['timeout'])){
$_SESSION['clustrmaps']['timeout'] = time();
?><img src="http://www2.clustrmaps.com/counter/index2.php?url=http://<?=$_cfg['url']?>" border="1" alt="Locations of visitors to this page (counting)" title="Locations of visitors to this page (counting)" /><?php
} else {
?><img src="http://www2.clustrmaps.com/stats/maps-no_clusters/<?=$_cfg['url']?>-thumb.jpg" border="1" alt="Locations of visitors to this page (no counting)" title="Locations of visitors to this page (no counting)" /><?php
}
?></a>

 

VALIDATION/XHTML PROBLEMS: ClustrMaps HTML is causing my page to fail a W3C validation test, or my blog/service provider to modify or reject it. What can I do?

As of 21st September 2006 you will see, on your Admin page, several choices for your HTML code, including one that is XHTML1.1 compliant. All are much cleaner than the older code. You can just substitute the new code for you old code.

Alternatively, if you want to stick with the old code, There are several issues that can be manually edited/fixed:

1. Neither the 'border' attribute nor the 'onError' code we use are XHTML 1.1 compliant; we're working on a more elegant solution, but you could either live with it 'as is' for now (which is what we would recommend), or as a temporary 'workaround' you could manually edit out the offending code... in particular

(a) just delete

border=1

and

(b) also delete everything from the beginning of

onError

right up to the final closing '>' (but don't delete that closing '>' itself).

Please note, however, that the onError code serves an extremely useful 'failsafe' purpose: in the very rare and unlikely event that our server goes down, you'll just get a 'broken image' icon where the thumbnail map should be! In contrast, with the original onError code left alone, you would instead get a nice little 'blank map with a holding message'.

2. Add a slash character "/" at the end of the img tag, and just before the ">" character, so that it looks like " /> " (without the quotes).

Your simplified HTML code would then look like this, with your own registered URL in place of the XXXXX below:


<a href="http://clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=XXXXX" id="clustrMapsLink">
<img src="http://clustrmaps.com/counter/index2.php?url=XXXXX" />
</a>

Wrong totals/dates, missing map, missing dots

The number of visitors yesterday is exceptionally low (e.g. 'Visits on previous day: 0') or high (e.g. 37,212), but I'm sure this is wrong. What happened?

On occasion we need to re-start some of our server processes, which has a knock-on effect on our large overnight runs. This may take an additional day or two to catch up, during which the count from some previous days will simply not get reported (they will appear as a count of '0'), but in general (a) your overall totals will be stored correctly, and (b) in the long run such 'blips' will self-correct and not be noticeable. In fact, when the totals begin catching up, you may then see an artificially high count for one day, which really means the previous low counts were ‘augmented’ with the multi-day total during the ‘catch up’ processing. As stated in (b) above, everything self-corrects over the long run! Your patience in this matter is greatly appreciated. Because of the fast-moving nature of issues like this, the best way to keep informed of what we are doing is to read the commentary on our news/blog site which has a faster update cycle than this FAQ page.

Users who have written to us will know how dedicated and responsive we are: if you look around the blogosphere, or follow the pointers on our own review and testimonial site, you will see many examples of users praising our rapid turnaround and enthusiastic customer relations. We take great pride in our hard-earned reputation. The last 'hurdle' on our path is ensuring that our massive scalability, rapid-rendering maps, and great customer service are ALSO accompanied by the kind of simple, fast, routine, robust, and reliable service, including daily updates, that all of users have come to expect. We will not disappoint you! We have now served up over 2 Billion maps, and are growing rapidly. We thank all of your wonderful and enthusiastic users for bearing with us. If a delay to your own map update has caused you exceptional problems, then please get in touch with us at the address at the bottom of this page, and we will discuss whether there is anything special we can do for you. If you are just 'worried', then it is simpler in the short term if you do not email us, because we already know of the problems. Any ClustrMaps+ user who has had a problem in the past knows that we offer a full no-questions-asked refund -- but of course we also know that users prefer to have the service, not a refund involving the rather tiny amounts of money that we charge for ClustrMaps+ !!! The service is precisely what we aim to provide: stay tuned for some great new capabilities!

 

My map says 'Updates begin tomorrow', but this has been the case for several days. What has happened?

First, you need to be confident that you have copied the HTML code we provided 100% accurately, and have not made changes such as altering or mixing any upper-case ("LIKE THIS") and lower-case ("like this") lettering you provided when you registered your URL! URLs such as http://ThisIsMyCoolSite.Org are discouraged for this reason, but of course you can use such names as long as you are consistent and your HTML editor has not automatically converted everything to lower case! We consistently get users who have 'modified' the HTML incorrectly, and it is important to understand that the 'serving of the correct thumbnail map' is critical for the correct counting to occur!

Second, it is technically possible for there to be a two-day or three-day turnaround for your initial map. In some cases, a late registration according to our own clock will 'just miss' the overnight cycle, so an extra day will be incurred (your count will still be correct). In other cases, a third day will be incurred because of a map-generation bottleneck, particularly near the end of a busy month. We are upgrading our servers all the time, so this problem will decrease in the future. Many thanks for your patience and understanding!

 

My map says 'updated daily' (or weekly or monthly), yet I can see it has not actually been updated when I expected.

In order for your map to be updated (whether daily, weekly, or monthly) the number of visitors shown must also have grown by more than a certain small percentage since the last update [see the next pargraph marked '*' for the exact percentage]. This does not mean that your grand (running) total needs to grow by this much, merely that the number of dots shown on your currently-displayed map needs to grow by that percentage (because smaller changes than that are often difficult to spot and not worth redrawing the map). Thus, if your current map shows, at the bottom, "Total number of visits depicted above = 1000" and you are scheduled for a daily update, and the percentage threshold is 10%*, then the next update will be trigerred after at least 101 new visits are logged, i.e. 1 more than 10%. If you have a monthly update set on your Admin page, then you may miss that due to this very threshold, so the update would occur, in this case, in the following month. Logging (tallying) of visitors continues even when no updates are shown: the overnight tally from the previous day (updated just once daily at approximately 0400-0500 GMT) can be seen in your personal tables shown when you login using the Admin page. More details about the update intervals and archive policy are provide in our explanatory timeline.

*Note: As of late September 2007, we are using a 'dynamic' threshold, so that all users with small numbers of dots (less than 10,000), and indeed paying ClustrMaps+ users at all levels will continue to get frequent map updates. In the worst case, users of the free service with large numbers of dots (> 10,000) may experience as much as a 20% threshold. The thresholds are something we are continuing to experiment with in order to keep a good balance of [a] user satisfaction and [b] server performance. Please consult our News site for explanations and any late-breaking announcements about this. The patience and support of our loyal users is very much appreciated!


I have waited for several days but nothing is happening. What's wrong?

If you are certain that the explanation immediately above does not apply to you, then there are a few other possibilities:

Normally you would want to put the ClustrMaps thumbnail map on the 'front door' page, though of course some people may access your pages via different routes; the other choice is to put in 'header' or 'footer' or 'sidebar' code so it appears everywhere... although in this case you may get 'over-zealous' counts.

 

Why do I see a 'Service begins tomorrow' instead of the actual map showing true visitor locations?

The 'Service begins tomorrow' image appears because there is a one-day 'bootsrapping' period during which the first data is collected - in fact the maps are updated daily at 0400 GMT, and until then a temporary 'Service begins tomorrow' image is displayed. If you check back again the next day you should see the real map, and then it will be updated once per day from then onwards.

 

There is no dot on the map where I saw one yesterday. This is NOT due to an archive happening, but something else... what happened?

Periodically we update our map database (normally on a quarterly basis). Generally the change is subtle, but some dots that may have been inaccurately represented in the past may be particularly affected. If anythying, the new databases are always much more accurate than the ones they supersede, so this is typically a good thing, although it may be disconcerting to see a 'previously-incorrect' dot move! Inaccuracies are inherent in the IP->geolocation conversion process, especially because some dots are only as accurate as 'the location of the user's Internet Service Provider', and inevitably these locations get increasingly accurate as we update our database.

 

I see a note saying "This map was (or will be) archived", or I've noticed that my lovely dots are gone. What does this mean?

This notification (and the sudden disappearance of dots) means that a regular (normally yearly) archive has either just occurred or is imminent (for some users, this happens monthly or weekly, as explained below). Your old thumbnail maps (or bigger maps for ClustrMaps+ users) will remain available in a stored archive, which is accessible as follows: when you zoom in to the world map, you'll see (high up on the page) a line labelled:

Navigation: Map with smaller clustrs | Maps Archive | Notes | Full Map Key

The second link ('Maps Archive') will take you to the page where your previous thumbnail map is stored (ClustrMaps+ users have a large list of complete earlier maps, including all the zoomed-in maps). You can click on the dates shown or 'turn thumbnails... on' to see the earlier map.

Explanation: Maps get archived at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, or yearly), as described in our explanatory timeline. The interval is specified by you on your Admin page see the 'Admin' link at the top of any ClustrMaps page). By default, archives happens yearly, but are sometimes delayed until a suitable current update has occurred, which is probably what has just taken place in the case of your own maps.

Naturally, people always like to have ever-more-dots, but the regular archive is the only way we can avoid having the maps turn into a 'giant red smear', and continue delivering the scalable service that everyone has come to expect.

If it helps to explain things to your own readers, you can always copy and paste the archive map referred to above (right-click and Save as... or right-click and View Image and note the URL and use that), and add that in to the appropriate page near your current active ClustrMaps thumbnail map with a suitable commentary (e.g. "Last year's totals:"). Note that for users of the free ClustrMaps service, only the thumbnail maps, i.e. NOT the large maps, are saved in the archive! This news does not do you much good after-the-fact, but we're trying to make it more obvious in advance in other places throughout the site, and as of October 2007 we have added advance warning emails to let you know when this is about to happen so you can save a snapshot of your older map.

When you are warned in advance, the predicted date of the archive is only approximate because there can be small delays when a heavy archiving load is incurred. Finally, note that even when a map archive has just taken place, the existing map will stay displayed until the NEXT map update. This helps to avoid displaying a totally empty map until there are fresh dots to show!

 

My visits total says "since 12 June 2006" but I started earlier. What happened?

Part of our databases were re-set on 12th June, so the most likely scenario is that you may have to settle for having 12 June 2006 as your start date (but read on...).

The GOOD news is that (i) users with already-archived maps will have the big maps re-set correctly at the next map update; (ii) for other users, we have found that in the long run it won't make a huge difference, and in any event it states right up front on the map which date is the reference date, so anyone viewing your map will be 'in the picture'.

The BAD news is that for some users it may be impossible to revert back to the earlier map.

HOWEVER, we do not want to disappoint our map users. Obviously, if you are a paying ClustrMaps+ user, and are dissatisfied with this, you are entitled to a full refund with no questions asked, and indeed in this case you will still be entitled to use the ClustrMaps+ service at no charge, so please get in touch with us at the address at the bottom of this page.

This particular database anomaly has never occurred before, and has only affected a small proportion of users. We take great pride in our customer service and high levels of user satisfaction, so please contact us if you want to discuss this in more detail.

 

Why is there a bigger number next to my map in your list of users than the number in my world map?

While the number in the list of users is taken from the live database, your maps (including the numbers) are generated only at specific update intervals (daily, weekly, or monthly as indicated on your map, depending upon the amount of traffic). Additionally there may be some hits with unrecognized IPs; i.e. hits with unknown geo-location which cannot be displayed in the maps. More details about the update intervals and archive policy are provided in our explanatory timeline.

 

I know of certain site visitors who are not showing up as dots: why?

There are several possible reasons for this: (i) you have not allowed sufficient time for the 'next update' to be displayed on your map (see explanations); (ii) the IP address of the site you think is not appearing may be owned by a company registered in a different location; (iii) your 'certainty' about the specific visits may reflect statistics from another counter or site log that tracks different pages, i.e. pages on your site where your thumbnail map has not been deployed (we can only count visits to the pages where your thumbnail map appears), as described in the next paragprah; (iv) the IP is not recognized by the IP -> geo-location translator or it might be mapped wrongly. A typical case when the location is not recognized correctly are dial-up connections; the ISP registers set of IPs for a whole country (and possibly allocates them dynamically to connections), moreover the ISP itself can be a company based in a different country. However for most IPs the translation works extremely reliably. We also update our IP -> geo-location database every few months to ensure its accuracy. As mentioned in (iii), there may be dramatic differences because of the methods used by different counters, as described next.

Comparison with other counters: Different counters can come up with inconsistent totals for a variety of reasons. For example, it is possible to get VERY DETAILED statistics from log analysis software that analyses hits to many pages on your site, including RSS feeds, whereas our thumbnail map *ONLY* counts the number of times the thumbnail map is actually 'renedered' or displayed to a user!!

 

Explanation of hits, visits, limits, updates

Could you explain the notation and counters displayed on the detailed maps?

A detailed annotation is provided in our Map Key.

 

How do map 'updates' and 'archives' work, and how do they affect the displayed totals?

A detailed account is provided in our explanatory timeline. Note that for users of the free ClustrMaps service, only the thumbnail maps, i.e. NOT the large maps, are saved in the archive!

 

What exactly is a 'visit', and how does it compare with 'hit', 'page view' and 'session'?

In January 2008 we wrote a news/blog posting about a change of policy. In our old policy, we increased the count of visitors every time a thumbnail map was 'served up' from our server to someone reading one of your pages. This meant that a 'visit' used to correspond formally to a single 'page view'. Now, if someone visiting from a specific IP address reloads your page 20 times in one day, they will be counted as just 1 visit. This is more representative of the overall flow of visitors to your site, even though it means you can't use ClustrMaps specifically as a 'page view counter' for the purposes of (say) counting advertising page views.

For completeness, we note that a 'hit' formally refers to every object that is delivered on your page (e.g. a page with 20 images could result in 21 hits, one for the page and one for each of the images). Some counter services consider a 'session' to be anything that happens within a 30-minute interval (i.e. 5 page views over a 20 minute period would still count as just 1 page view, because they occured within one session), but we prefer the '1 per day' interval, since it is the geographical spread over the long run that is of most relevance to ClustrMaps. In the past, 'page views' provided a good approximateion of the true number of visitors, but obviously there were exceptions: a typical 'bad case' was that of discussion forums, where you can get a fresh additional page view for EVERY message read. Other bad cases happened with sites that have the same thumbnail map appearing many times: in such cases we recommend using a single 'front door' map, as described in the answer to the 'too many dots' question.

But with our 1-visit-per-IP-per-day policy instituted in early 2008, even discussion forums can avoid being overloaded with false counts. Read more about our policy on our a news/blog posting.

 

I received an email from you saying I exceeded number of displayed visits. What does it mean? What are the other limits? What if there is a peak in number of visits to my page?

There are two different values checked (a) the daily number of visits that your site has received, and (b) number of visits actually shown in the current map. While (a) is simply the normal limit for each category of users (see the products page for the actual limits), there are several limits for (b) depending on frequency of map updates (because number of visits shown affects time needed for the map update).

Limits for (b) are higher for less frequent map updates (10k for daily, 50k for weekly, 200k for monthly). If you go over the limit and still want more frequent updates (e.g. you may want to stick with daily updates), you can go to the Admin page and increase frequency of archives (which is by default once a year) to monthly or even weekly. Then the number of shown visits will be less likely to reach the limit for daily updates. After you increase the archive frequency you'll be able to set the map updates back to be done more often.

The limit (b) is there to protect server from spending too much time updating the maps; especially as the complexity grows polynomially with number of visits. AND also because there is not a big visual difference between having 20k and 200k visits displayed in the map - the distribution of dots does not change significantly.

The notification emails are generated automatically. In case there is a temporary peak in the number of visits to your page, this is fine, because we allow for such peaks to tail off again.

 

Miscellaneous, new features, appearance, suggestions

How do I invite another user?

Existing users have an 'invite' button on the very BOTTOM of their login ('admin') page, i.e. the one you get to via the 'Admin' link at the top of any ClustrMaps.com page... a user then just needs to enter a friend's email address, and the friend will receive an invitation with a link to register.

 

Can I block my own IP address, which is making my totals look too big for one location?

This is an excellent and popular idea, and part of our plan. Unfortunately, we cannot block specific IP addresses/ranges right now, but look for that in a forthcoming upgrade of the service!

 

Can I have thumbnail maps with different sizes, colours, text?

Right now, the only thumbnail maps we can provide are the ones you see, but many users have requested the ability to have custom colours or sizes, and we hope to provide options for that in future releases. Stay tuned for announcements about this on our News page.

 

How to contact us: 3 tips

If you have read carefully through the questions and answers above, and still have a problem, or want to contact us about something else, then we will be very pleased to hear from you.

We are currently handling all emails, even for issues such as feedback and sales, through one single address, which is shown below (note that it may be different from the one you are used to - this one goes to the team generally). First we provide three 'tips' for a helpful email:

1. Make your "Subject:" very clear, otherwise it will look like spam!

2. In the body of the email, specify the exact URL you have registered with us

3. Let us know how we can help you!

OK, here it is then:


note the unusual spellings