Today's favorite maps and biggest users, updated every 5 minutes

     Tiles  Users  Map Name                 

 1    6235     81  Elevation Data (DEM)
 2    5497     46  USGS 24k Legacy Topo
 3    3998     32  Northeast US LIDAR
 4    3669     24  Landscape of the US
 5    1931     13  USGS 2023 Digital Topo
 6    1629     12  1930 NJ-NYC-PHL Aerials
 7    1582     11  USGS 62k Historic Topo
 8    1545      5  US Landscape Topo
 9    1172      7  1980's NHAP B/W Aerials
10    1170     11  2023-2025 NAIP Aerials

     Tiles  Users  From                     

 1   11003      8  New York                 
 2    9627     31  New Jersey               
 3    2937      6  Michigan                 
 4    2348     40  Virginia                 
 5    2243      4  Vermont                  
 6    2044     12  Pennsylvania             
 7    1907      6  Maryland                 
 8    1861      6  Enterprise Networks      
 9    1583      1  Government Networks      
10    1392      5  International            

The tables above represent only the top ten out of hundreds of users and maps accessed each day at boydsmaps. Maps consist of many small images called "tiles". It takes about 40 tiles to fill a big computer screen but only 8 for most smartphones. As you move or zoom the map, additional tiles are sent. These totals only include maps stored on the boydsmaps server, remotely-hosted USGS maps are not included. Each table shows tile usage and the number of users. Click/tap any map to learn more about it. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data is also stored in tiles and used for the live elevation display, regardless of map choice. Individual users are grouped together by state to preserve anonymity. Educational and institutional users are grouped based on their domain names.

Note that the number of tiles and users for groups such as "Government Networks", "Higher Eduction", etc and the state user lists are not mutually exclusive as things currently stand. For example, if a university is located in New York, its users and tiles would appear in both the New York and Higher Education stats. We are still trying to decide whether this is a "bug" or a "feature".

The statistics automatically update every five minutes while this page is open. They are reset to zero each morning and then accumulate over the following 24 hours until the next morning reset. Usage numbers are therefore small early in the morning and steadily grow throughout the day and following night.

When you view a map, the boydsmaps server logs each tile requested along with your IP address. These addresses are the basis for the locations shown in the table above. Your privacy is important to boydsmaps and we don't collect or retain any other user data. Since there are no accounts and no registration, we simply don't have any of your personal information. There are a number of well known ways to disguise your real IP address if you want even more anonymity. For this reason, the state totals shown above may not always reflect true user locations. Cell phones may also appear to be in the wrong state, as can services like StarLink.

Generally speaking, the number of users shown are probably less than the number of people actually using boydsmaps. User numbers are based on unique ip addresses but multiple people may use a single ip address, especially at institutions. In other words, a single ip address might be used by a whole office, but would only appear as one user here.

In summary: the server knows exactly how many map tiles it sends, but determining the number of individual users and where they are located is as much art as it is science.

User statistics were pre-processed with goaccess, an open source realtime web log analyzer by Gerardo Orellana.
Geolocation database from GeoLite: free GeoIP® converted to legacy .dat format by mailfud.org/geoip-legacy/
Custom boydsmaps user statistics software developed with the assistance of google gemini