I recently stumbled across this really cool PHP class for working with the Google map API. Being bored on Saturday I figured it would be fun to map all of the HelpSpot customers. While I've looked at this data before, I've never plotted it on a map. It turns out to be very interesting. It's cool to see the little dots all over, but it's even more interesting to see how many customers are near each other and how just about every major city in the US has at least one HelpSpot customer.

One disappointing note is that I'd say only about half the customers are actually on the map. While most of the addresses work fine in Google maps directly, they don't seem to work using the Google web service for finding the coordinates. It misses some US and many international addresses, which I guess is to be expected. Most disappointing though is that it fails to return any coordinates for customers in the UK. Since 15-20% of HelpSpot sales are there that takes a good chunk of the customers out right off the top. It also leaves Europe looking slimmer than it should.

You'll also see that no Asian countries have icons at all, which is also incorrect, but I'm not surprised that the API couldn't plot the addresses. Australia is under represented and on and on. Never the less, it's cool and actually a bit informative.

The World:

The USA:

San Fransisco (we've got the bay surrounded):

Seattle:

Paris (2 customers in walking distance):