Wednesday Jan 02, 2008
Wednesday Jan 02, 2008
I ran across something very interesting while poking around Google Analytics Map Overlay report last night. If you display the Map Overlay by continent, you'll be very surprised to find out that Google wants you to believe there are only six continents: the Americas, Europe (which contains Russia?), Africa, Asia (which should contain Russia), and Oceania (which is apparently Australia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania). And, of course, they left out Antarctica, which is probably fine. But there probably is internet access in Antarctica, so why leave the researchers out? I was never aware of this, but there are different views on how many continents there are - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents. However, in all of these, Russia is always part of Asia. And as for the use of Oceania, according to Wikipedia, "The names Oceania or Australasia are sometimes used in place of Australia. For example, the Atlas of Canada names Oceania,[10] as does the model taught in Latin America and Iberia."
Any ideas on why they're confused?
I'm not familiar with how Google Analytics displays it, but I believe it is standard practice to consider Russia west of the Urals to be in Europe and
Russia east of the Urals to be in Asia.
Certainly Wikipedia agrees that Russia is part of Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
> Of Europe's 48 countries, Russia is the
> largest by both area and population, ...
<--------------------------------
Most people consider Turkey to be another country that has one part in Europe and another in Asia.
An argument could be made that the U.S. lies mostly in North America, but has some parts (certainly American Samoa, maybe Hawaii) that fit more naturally into Oceania.
It is not feasible to identify broad categories of political geography (such as countries and internet domains) too closely with broad categories of physical topography (such as continents). Any attempt to do so with total precision is bound to founder on the fine details.
Posted by Paul on January 24, 2008 at 05:47 PM PST #
They need to correct two things IMO. Fix Michigan and split Russia in half (Half Europe & Half Asia).
Posted by Ryan on May 07, 2009 at 11:11 AM PDT #