Make a Map of Your Retailers or Sellers

The internet has made many things possible without leaving your device. You can order clothes, toys, household goods, and even groceries. Despite these e-commerce conveniences, most of life still takes place in the real world. People browse local shops to touch the merchandise and interact with their community.

There’s still a place for the online world within the offline world. People search the internet to determine where they’ll physically visit. Maps can help connect the virtual and real worlds, as you’ll see as we make a store locator map below.

View Example Map in a full screen map

A map like this is useful if you:

  • Sell products through retailers
  • Run multiple locations of a business
  • Use consignment or other sellers for your products

All you’ll need is the name and address of the physical stores, then you’ll be able to build a Google Maps store locator without code in just in a few clicks.

Organize Contacts in a Spreadsheet

The first thing you need is a list of places you want to map. You may already have this stored in a text file, a CRM, or maybe even on a piece of yellow lined paper. A really good way to store your list of locations is in a spreadsheet.

Create a new spreadsheet in Excel, Google Spreadsheets, or similar tool. Among the column headers you may want include:

  • Store name
  • Address
  • City name
  • State or province name
  • Country name

If you’re already using another tool, you may be able to export them into a spreadsheet format, such as converting a CRM to Excel.

Or start fresh and add the columns you want to track, and add in all your locations. When complete, it will look something like this:

When you have a spreadsheet full of locations, you’ll be ready to create your map.

Make a “Find a Retailer” Map

An Excel or other spreadsheet document is a great way to share data with others. Additionally, you can use it to track and sort your locations or retailers. And when it comes to creating a map, it’s as easy as copy-paste.

From within your spreadsheet program, highlight all your data, including the headers. Use Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on Mac) to copy the data. Then go to the spreadsheet mapping tool on the BatchGeo homepage and put the data in the main box using Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac) to paste.

The video above walks through a basic map, or you can find a full Excel mapping tutorial that walks through step by step.

When you’re done, your map will look something like this:

View Retail Locations in a full screen map

There are only a few locations on this map, but you could have many more. Each row of your spreadsheet will be one marker on your map. Additionally, you can include other data about the location, such as a category of store, inventory, or anything else you’d find useful.

Add Store Type and Other Details

Now that you have a basic map of locations, you can expand the map to include other data. The additional information will be displayed within the box displayed when clicking a marker. You can also use map marker grouping to filter only the markers that match the data.

What sort of data would you use? One common choice is a category or type of store. For example, many companies sell into different types of retailers. A glue gun manufacturer may sell to hardware stores, supermarkets, and craft shops. You could add a column in your spreadsheet for the type of store.

Other fields you could add for the each store include:

  • A description of the store
  • The hours the store is open
  • Phone number(s) for the store
  • Neighborhood or other category-like information

When you have your spreadsheet with the location and other columns of data ready, simply follow the copy-paste instructions above. This time, rather than clicking “Map Now,” you’ll want to “Validate & Set Options.”

Double check the location columns are correct, then click the “Group By” dropdown to select Type, Category, or similar group-able field. Now you’re ready to click “Make Map” and see a map like this appear:

View Retail Locations with Type in a full screen map

Notice that the store types determine the colors of the markers. You can click the options at the bottom of the map to filter only the types you select. This location browsing can be very useful for you, especially if you have many retailers. It can also be a great service to your customers, so you can help them find their nearest place to buy from you.

Publish the Map on Your Website

Installing a “Find a Retailer” or “Store Locator” on your website adds professional polish. It also helps your best customers buy more from you! Once you have a BatchGeo map created for all your sellers, it’s really easy to add it to your website.

Every time you create a map, you receive an email with a link to edit your map. Also in that email—and on the edit page—you’ll find “Embed Code.” This is some HTML you can use in any website to easily include your map within your existing website.

All you need to do is create a new page or choose an existing retailers page. Then copy-paste the Embed Code to your website.

Add a Search Box

Each BatchGeo map comes with its own search box in the upper right hand corner. You can use it to enter a city, postal code, or full address to search the map for the closest location.

In addition, you can include a search box without a map anywhere on your website. From the same map editing page, choose “Locator Code” and copy-paste that into a single page on your website, or a header/footer template to include it on every page. Let your customers find a retailer or store location from anywhere on your site!

A Map For All Your Data

Now that you’ve created a map of store locations, what other spreadsheets or lists of addresses could you make geographic. Get customers or leads on a map, perform geographic data analysis, or simply map your address book to see where all your friends live.

All you need is a simple spreadsheet with addresses, and we’ll turn that into a useful map. Make your first map today!

Tour de France: Winners & Route Mapped

Each year in July, over one hundred serious cyclists gather together in France to compete in an endurance race, the Tour de France. The event takes more than three weeks, as the route covers 2,200 miles (3,500 km). It’s definitely no small feat to be be the first to cross the final finish line, although some countries are more familiar with their cyclists winning the title than others.

View Tour de France Winners in a full screen map

Click around on the map above to see which countries have won the Tour de France so many times it will make your wheels spin, or read on for highlights about the winners and the 2018 route mapped.

Pump Those Brakes, How Many Times Has France Won?

Many countries send their most talented cyclists to France each year in the hopes of being Tour de France champions. The following countries have had the most success at the race:

  • France, 36 wins
  • Belgium, 18 wins
  • Spain, 12 wins

The Tour de France is just that, a Tour of France. It should then come as no surprise to learn that the French have won the competition more times than any other country in the world. With 36 wins under its belt, France is clearly pedaling in a different gear than the rest of the world. Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that 21 of those 36 wins were from different cyclists. There is clearly something in the water in France that produces not just one all-star cycler but many. However, the country is in the middle of a slight dry spell. The last time France won the competition was 33 years ago in 1985.

Belgium has won the second-most amount of Tours. While nowhere near as many wins as France, Belgium’s 18 wins are still notable. Impressively, 10 out of those 18 wins were all won by separate cyclists. Belgium last won the Tour in 1976.

Spain has won the Tour de France 12 times with seven different riders. Their last win was in 2009, which is much more recent than France and Belgium. However, if all of these top winning countries haven’t won in the past eight years, who has been winning the Tour de France lately? Well, since 2012, Great Britain has won every Tour de France save for 2014 when Italy snagged first place. So, in the past six years, Great Britain has won five competitions.

Wheelie, Wheelie Big Winners

As for the individual cyclists who did the grunt work of cycling nearly every day for over three weeks? There are five cyclists who at one point won the Tour de France five or more times.

  • Lance Armstrong, 7-time winner (disqualified)
  • Bernard Hinault, 5-time winner
  • Eddy Merckx, 5-time winner
  • Jacques Anquetil, 5-time winner
  • Miguel Indurain, 5-time winner

Lance Armstrong is perhaps the most controversial cyclist in history. While his wins have been denounced and reallocated to the runners-up, at one point the whole world believed he won seven consecutive Tour de France tournaments. Armstrong initially won the competition for the U.S. in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 before he was stripped of all titles due to doping.

Bernard Hinault, unlike Armstrong, is still considered a Tour de France winner, and a pretty talented one at that. With Armstrong’s disqualification, Hinault is one of the four cyclists to officially tie for the most Tour de France wins. Hinault won the Tour for France four consecutive times in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982. He lost in ‘83 and ‘84, only to make a staggering final comeback in 1985 with his last win for France.

Eddy Merckx, also with five Tour de France wins, is a Belgian cyclist who won the competition for his country in four consecutive Tours in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972. He did not win in ‘73 but came back to win the 1974 competition. Jacques Anquetil, another Frenchman, won the Tour in 1957, and then again consecutively from 1961 to 1964. The Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain won the competition for five years straight starting in 1991.

Because Lance Armstrong doesn’t really count, we’ll add in the next highest winner to replace him. Chris Froome is a British rider with four wins under his belt. He is the reason for Great Britain’s most recent domination of the Tour de France, winning the competition for them in 2013, 2015, 2016, and is the current title holder having won in 2017. Will he win again this year?

A Vicious Cycle: Cheating Throughout the Tour

Avid Tour de France fans know all about the cheating scandals that rocked the races. In fact, there are five cheating scandals you should know about that explain why official Tour de France reports vary regarding how many times a country has won. Some countries, once a Tour winner has been implicated in doping and subsequently disqualified, refuse to give their title back.

You already know about Lance Armstrong, but let’s hear about the others with rescinded wins and tarnished reputations due to doping scandals.

Bjarne Riis is one of the first cyclists who won the Tour but who was then disqualified. Riis is Denmark’s only Tour de France champion from way back in 1996. So you’d understand why they’d have a tough time giving up their one and only title just because Riis admitted to cheating in 2007. Over ten years after his big Tour de France win, Riis admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs during the 1996 Tour. The Tour de France rescinded his win, and Jan Ullrich of Germany was proclaimed the new 1996 winner. However, in 2008, the Tour gave him back the W, likely because of just how much time had passed since his win. However, that reinstated W* was forever followed by an asterisk to ensure everyone would always know it was a tarnished victory.

Because the Tour reinstated Riis’s win, Jan Ullrich is no longer considered to be the winner of the 1996 Tour. Though Ullrich, the German-born cycler, did officially earn Germany its only first-place status the year after the Riis fiasco in 1997. However, Ullrich’s reputation is not as squeaky-clean as you’d expect of someone who kind-of sort-of won the 1996 Tour de France due to the original winner’s drug use. In fact, Ullrich himself has had some trouble with PEDs, although it didn’t have any effect on his 1997 win. In 2006, Ullrich was banned from competing in the Tour de France pending an investigation into whether or not he was familiar with using PEDs in recent years. He was found guilty of PED use in 2012 and admitted it in 2013. Ullrich’s admittance has had no effect on his second-place but kind-of first-place status in 1996 and actual win in 1997.

In addition to Armstrong, Riis, and Ullrich, two more cyclists have has run-ins with the law when it comes to PEDs during the Tour. Both Floyd Landis, an American cycler, and Alberto Contador from Spain had titles rescinded due to doping. Landis doped in 2006, and the runner-up, Óscar Pereiro from Spain is officially considered the winner. However, Pereiro’s win didn’t give Spain much of a leg up in wins because, in 2010, Alberto Contador lost the Tour de France win for Spain due to doping.

Tour de France: 2018 Route

The Tour de France lasts a grueling 21 days, with only two days of rest. A mixture of terrain types from nice and flat and hilly to mountainous keeps the cyclists on their toes. More so than just the variety of terrains, the competition throws in a blend of Team Timed-trials and Individual Timed-trials so the Tour is never the same from day to day. It is also not the same from year to year, so we thought we’d map this year’s 2018 Tour de France route.

View 2018 Tour de France Route in a full screen map

Follow along by stage on the map above to get a feel for just how much land these cyclers cover in an attempt to take home the W for their country.

The cyclists are on the move from their very first point signaling the beginning of the yearly Tour on Saturday, July 7 in Noirmoutier-en-l’Île and traveling their way around France’s borders to the Tour’s finish line on Sunday, July 29, in Paris Champs-Élysées. Of the two rest days they get in between, the first occurs ten days after the start of the Tour on Monday, July 16th, in Annecy. Seven days after that comes the second rest day on Monday, July 23rd in Carcassonne, France. Note that the insane amount of kilometers traveled from Stage 9 to Stage 10 is traveled by plane, just as with Stage 20 to the finish line at Stage 21.


And there you have it, folks! The Tour de France’s biggest winners and the route the 2018 competitors will take very soon, all on a map. Who will win in 2018? Watch the Tour de France in July to find out. And, if you’re just slightly under the Tour de France’s level, you can still map your own neighborhood bike path today with BatchGeo in seconds.

Voting Age Around the World

The age at which a citizen of a country may cast their vote differs around the world. Before World War II, most countries set the minimum voting age at 21 years old. In 1946, Czechoslovakia became the first country to lower their minimum voting age to 20, and over twenty years later 17 countries too lowered their voting age. By the end of the 1900s, 18 had become the most common voting age, and it remains the same today. However, that doesn’t mean every country around the world subscribes to the same age. In fact, the minimum voting age around the world ranges from 16 to 25 years old. In some countries, citizens of eligible age are required by law to vote. However, for most countries, voting is optional. As you will see, there are many different minimum ages when it comes to voting.

View Voting Age in a full screen map

Click around on the map above to discover for yourself the voting ages of over 235 countries, or read on to see what fascinating tidbits of information we’ve selected from the voting ages of countries around the world.

Most Common Voting Age

A glaring 86% of the 237 countries on our list have a minimum voting age requirement of 18 years old. However, the 205 countries that require their citizens to be at least 18 years old to vote are not all homogenous when it comes to exceptions to the rule and histories. Take Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example. The country has an 18-year-old voting age requirement, however, an exception to the rule is that 16-year-olds who are employed may also vote.

The legislative body of Iran can’t seem to make up its mind when it comes to Iran’s voting age. While currently Iran’s voting age coincides with the majority of the world’s countries, before 2007, Iran’s minimum voting age was just 15 years old. It was changed to 18 years of age in 2007 and then changed back to 15 years old in 2009 after just two years. In 2011, Iran’s voting age returned to 18 years old.

Japan has also experimented with changing its voting age as recently as 2016. Japan changed its minimum voting age from 20 years old to 18 years old.

The history of why 18 is the most common voting age lies in its connection to military enlistment. For most countries, 18 years old is the age when a citizen may enlist in the military. Logically, those who may be drafted or volunteer to fight for their country desire to cast their vote come election season.

Where Police and Military Members Cannot Cast Their Votes

Some countries disagree with allowing police and military members the right to vote. The Dominican Republic bars all members of its police and military forces from partaking in elections. The Dominican Republic is not the only country to do so, at least in the past. Peru used to ban all police and military members from voting in elections, however, a 2005 constitutional reform removed this law and now police and military members may vote.

The countries of Oman, Kuwait, and Indonesia have yet to express interest in allowing their police and military forces to vote. Guatemala also prohibits active duty members of the armed forces from voting, and those members are even restricted to their barracks on election day.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, in North Korea, members of the military may vote regardless of age.

Youngest Voting Age

The youngest minimum voting age is 16 years old. Eleven countries lay claim to this young national voting age or just 5% of all of the countries on our list.

These countries include:

  • Brazil
  • Ecuador
  • Austria
  • Cuba
  • Guernsey
  • Isle of Man
  • Jersey
  • Malta
  • Nicaragua
  • Scotland
  • Argentina
    • In Argentina, voting between the ages 16 to 18 is optional, but becomes compulsory after 18 years old.

Where Voting is Required

Voting may be optional for those aged 16 through 18 in Argentina, but once you hit 19, voting becomes mandatory. Argentina is not the only country in which voting is compulsory, meaning that eligible citizens are required by law to vote in national and or local elections. The following countries also mandate that their citizens vote:

  • Argentina
  • Brazil*
  • Luxembourg
  • Dominican Republic
  • Belgium
  • Peru
  • Paraguay
  • Bolivia
  • Ecuador*
  • Australia

While the above-listed countries may all be similar in that voting is compulsory, they are not exactly all the same. What differentiates the countries from each other is the different age ranges for which voting is compulsory. For example, in Brazil and Peru, all citizens from the age of 18 through age 70 must vote. In Luxembourg and Paraguay, citizens 18 years old or older must vote until they reach the age of 75 years old. Ecuador has the youngest age at which voting stops being compulsory at 65 years young.

In addition to compulsory voting, the Dominican Republic boasts a fascinating voting obligation: all married people regardless of age are required to vote. The same rule applies in Indonesia.

In some countries which require their citizens to vote, voting is optional for citizens who are illiterate. These countries include Brazil and Ecuador. However, the literacy rates in Brazil and Ecuador, over 92%, and over 94% respectively, don’t imply this is much of an issue.

Oldest Minimum Voting Age

Finally, the oldest minimum voting age is 25 years old. The only country to implement this is the United Arab Emirates. The UAE elects its officials with a 6,689-member electoral college. The electoral college members are appointed by the emirates and are required to be citizens of the emirate they are to cast their vote on behalf of and must be 25 years old or older, depending on the emirate. They must also be literate.


Is your country’s voting age the same as 86% of other countries at 18 years old or does your country share a voting age with less than 1% of the world with a voting age of 19 or 25? Whatever your country’s minimum voting age is, you can make your own map like the one above at batchgeo.com today.