Map analytics

[twelch]

In some of our OceanMap surveys we've thought about and capturing more information about how the user interacts with the map including the zoom level they were at and such. Seems like we could use that sort of thing here. For example capturing what the users view was when they draw a feature. What layers they're using and how much, where they're looking on the map. Could be pretty useful information to planners. Could be quietly collected in the background. What do you think?

[perrygeo]

Capturing info at feature creation would be a different technique than logging layers and general usage stats. Both would be useful. The view that the feature was draw from could be used as the KML "look at" which would be nifty.

[twelch]

Seems worth doing and could be made agnostic in terms of whether you are using 2D or 3D.

[perrygeo]

View capture would need to tied directly to the API of the map client - getting the camera properties is completely different API and data structure than a bbox/zoomlevel for instance.

[twelch]

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of the backend and API.

[twelch]

Indeed, Google is rolling this out with their analytics for business now. http://www.webpronews.com/google-maps-analytics-for-business-opens-up-troves-of-new-site-data-2012-04.

They take it from an optimization/goal standpoint. You can see for example how much people are panning the map or what zoom levels they are accessing. You can then tune your map to reduce how much they do these things