TraceGlobe
See where your visitors are on a 3D globe or a flat map — sessions played back over time, bubbles per place, or countries.
The three views
The switch at the top left of the Globe picks what is plotted. Every view follows the page's date range and filters, and works on both the 3D globe and the 2D map (the switch at the top right).
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Timeline | Sessions placed by when they happened. The range is cut into equal windows, and the globe shows a marker for every session that was active during the selected window. You can press play to step through the windows. |
| Coordinates | A bubble for every place visits came from, sized by the number of sessions there. Bubbles that would overlap merge into one showing their combined count until you zoom in. |
| Countries | Countries shaded by visitors, with a bubble on each one. This is the only view that also counts sessions without coordinates (see below). |
Controls
Moving around
- Drag turns the globe, or pans the 2D map.
- Ctrl/⌘ + scroll (or a trackpad pinch), a double-click on the map, or the
+/−buttons zoom in and out. A plain scroll keeps scrolling the page. The ↺ button resets the view. - The globe spins slowly until you touch the page. Resume spin starts it again. It never spins if your system asks for reduced motion.
Clicking
- Countries: clicking a country filters the whole page by it. Click it again to clear the filter.
- Coordinates: clicking a place filters by its city. Clicking a merged bubble zooms in on it.
- Timeline: clicking a marker opens that session, with its full timeline of pages and events. A numbered marker holds several sessions. If they're from one place you get a list to pick from; if they're from several places the view zooms in instead.
Timeline playback
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bars | Sessions active in each window. The highlighted bar is the current window, and clicking a bar jumps to it. |
| Slider | Scrubs through the windows. It also works with the arrow keys once focused. |
| Play / Pause | Steps through the windows one at a time and stops at the end. Pressing play again starts over. |
| 1× 2× 4× | Playback speed. At 1× each window stays on screen for about 0.7 seconds. |
| Window | How much time each step covers, from 5 minutes to 1 day. It's picked automatically from the range, and sizes that would make thousands of steps aren't offered. |
Solid markers are sessions that started in the current window. Faded ones began earlier and were still active. Playback pauses when you open a session or click anywhere outside the globe card, such as a filter, the date picker or the sidebar.
How locations are worked out
Each session's location comes from its visitor's IP address when the session starts. The IP is looked up once, and only the result (country, region, city and the city's approximate latitude/longitude) is kept. The IP address itself is never stored. The location is pinned to the session, so a visitor whose connection moves partway through still counts in one place everywhere.
- Coordinates are city-level and rounded to 2 decimal places (about 1 km). They mark roughly where the city is, not where anyone was. Every session from the same city lands on the same point.
- Coordinates are only kept when the lookup found a city. A country-only match would otherwise put everyone at the middle of the country.
- IP lookups can be wrong. Mobile networks, VPNs, corporate proxies and privacy relays often resolve to a city far from the visitor, or to the provider's own location.
FAQ and troubleshooting
Coordinates or Timeline is empty, but Countries has data
Sessions from before coordinates were recorded, and sessions whose city couldn't be determined, have a country but no position. They still count in the Countries view and in every other report. Below the globe you'll see how many sessions in the range have coordinates.
The numbers differ between views
Countries counts visitors. Coordinates and Timeline count sessions, and only sessions that have coordinates. One visitor with three visits is 1 in Countries and 3 in Coordinates.
The timeline says it's playing the latest sessions only
Timeline loads up to 10,000 sessions (the most recent ones in the range) to stay quick. Narrow the date range or add a filter to see earlier sessions. Coordinates has no such limit on sessions and shows the busiest 5,000 places.
A marker is in the wrong place
That comes from the IP lookup, not your site. The same session will show the same city under Locations on the main dashboard.
Regions
The Globe doesn't shade regions or states. For region-level numbers, use the Regions tab of the Locations card on the main dashboard.