Author: Adam DuVander

Maps display the geographic location of your data on the world. But most aren’t made up of random information jumbled together. There’s often a topic or theme to the data within. Whether the topic is about the Olympics or has a Valentine’s Day theme, you can be sure you continue your map’s cohesive narrative by customizing the Google Maps icon, also known as the map marker, that symbolizes the locations below. This can be done in three ways, via the color, shape, and label of your map marker.

View Largest Wildfires of the Last Decade in a full screen map

So, once you’ve prepared your data for a map, you can begin making your map markers match your content by using shapes and labels. But first, let’s explore how color can create a cohesive narrative.

Create Cohesive Narratives with Color

Say you’re mapping a topic and it’s clear which of two options is good and which is bad. Wouldn’t it be fitting to change Google Map marker color to green for the preferred data and red for the not-so-good? There are many similar cases in which your marker color can help in conveying your data. Check out just one example on our map of working vs. broken McDonald’s ice cream machines below.

View McBroken Los Angeles in a full screen map

Another example of telling a story via a well-thought-out Google Map marker color is selecting yellow, light blue, and orange (to represent gold, silver, and bronze) for a map about every country’s Olympic wins and losses.

View Every Country’s Olympic Wins in a full screen map

And when mapping Valentine’s Day Town Names, it makes sense to use red and pink markers. But for a topic that doesn’t have a natural color association like our examples above, picking the colors of the rainbow will always be pleasing to you and your map’ users’ eyes.

BatchGeo gives you control over the story you tell with your location data, right down to how they’re styled. See all of your marker color choices when you edit your map and click Set Options. Then, Show Advanced Options to check them out. But color customization isn’t the only way to match your content to your map’s style.

Shape Your Map Marker

As with carefully curated colors, the shape of your markers can also hold meaning. While the default Google Maps pin icons might be your go-to option, don’t forget you can mix it up to suit your mapping needs.

For our map of CCTV Cameras by City, we wanted to nix the destination-feel of the pin marker. The rule of thumb is: if it’s not important to pinpoint the exact location on the map, use a marker shape other than the pin. This most often applies to maps of cities, states, or countries.

View CCTV Cameras by City in a full screen map

To change your marker shape when editing your BatchGeo map, scroll to Set Options, Show Advanced Options, and navigate to Marker shape. Square map markers also have their uses and both are better than pins for displaying a marker label.

Identify At A Glance With Labels

A great map marker can only improve your map. And our final tip for getting these great markers involves labels. Best suited for maps with fewer markers, labels enable users to view how many markers there are at a glance.

Plus, as in our map of the 23 largest wildfires, we can quickly determine the largest fire (1) down to the smallest (23) thanks to the numbered labels. Letter labels work the same way.

View Largest Wildfires of the Last Decade in a full screen map

Here’s where to find the label option in BatchGeo. Click Edit Map, then Set Options > Show Advanced Options. To the right of the Advanced options menu, next to “Label each marker” choose between none, letters, and numbers. Once you’ve selected, opt to Map Your Data near the bottom of the page.

Master the three ways of making your map markers match your content: ​​color, shape, and label with BatchGeo.

Alcohol aficionados of the drinking age enjoy a nightly glass (or more) of vino. Or maybe it’s just a flute of bubbly on special occasions. If you’re part of this crowd, you may have a favorite bottle, box, or overall brand. But where do the stars of this favorite evening activity come from? Within the U.S., there are more than 10,000 wineries. Let’s cheers to the 10 largest wine companies, the biggest changes in production from year to year, along with where they’re located on the map below. We’ll also show how you can use a map’s clustering to make sense of large amounts of data.

View Largest Wineries in US in a full screen map

We mapped Wine Business Monthly’s 2020 and 2018 reports of the largest wineries in US, which represent more than 90% of wine sold in the U.S. You can sort the map by rank, cases sold, and the changes in both from 2018—or read on for more information about the top 10 biggest wineries in the US.

Top 10 Largest Wine Companies

All of the wineries on the map are notable. But the top 10 are definitely something to drink to.

2020 RANK	2020 COMPANY	2020 U.S. CASES SOLD	CASES SOLD CHANGE FROM 2018	RANK CHANGE FROM 2018
1	E & J Gallo Winery	70,000,000	0	0
2	The Wine Group	53,000,000	0	0
3	Constellation Brands	35,000,000	-15,000,000	0
4	Trinchero Family Estates	20,000,000	700,000	0
5	Treasury Wine Estates	14,000,000	-2,000,000	0
6	Delicato Family Wines	13,000,000	2,800,000	0
7	Bronco Wine Company	10,000,000	0	0
8	SteMichelle Wine Estates	8,200,000	-800,000	0
9	Jackson Family Wines	6,000,000	0	0
10	Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits (Josh Cellars)	4,340,000	2,140,000	2

The 2020 top 10 list is almost identical to that of 2018, with E & J Gallo Winery consistently topping the charts as America’s #1. Considering a standard wine case contains 12 750 ml bottles, the 70,000,000 cases sold in 2020 is an astronomical amount. The family-owned winery is based in Modesto, CA and also owns the popular Barefoot Wine.

As was the case for the entire map of the largest wine companies, these top 10 are representing California, second-place The Wine Group included. Notably, Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, specifically, Josh Cellars, is the only Connecticut-based winery in the top 10, and on the entire map of the 50 largest U.S. wineries. It’s also the only winery in the top 10 that rose in rank in 2020. Let’s dive more into the changes in the years, whether positive or negative.

Biggest Changes in Wine

The aforementioned Josh Cellars of Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits both rose in rank by two spots and saw a growth of +2,140,000 cases. Yet, that wasn’t the largest positive change. The sixth-largest winery in the U.S., Delicato Family Wines, had the largest increase in cases sold between 2018 and 2020: +2,800,000 cases. However, the increase was not enough to bump them up in rank.

These two wineries are the only increases in the millions, as Precept Wine’s increase of 800,000 cases is the next largest positive change. That earned it #12 from #13 in 2018. As for solely rank increases, only one winery jumped in rank via double-digits. NakedWines.com is now the 27th largest wine-maker in the U.S., up 10 from previous years.

Just like the increases, there are two wineries with case production changes in the millions. New York’s Constellation Brands went down 15,000,000 cases in 2020 while the Melbourne-based Treasury Wine Estates produced 2,000,000 fewer cases. Yet, even with this significant case drop-off, neither winery decreased in rank. You can discover the largest rank decreases on the map above. For now, we’ll move on to where these top wineries are located.

Where are the Wineries?

When it comes to the location of the biggest wineries in the US, the state of California is clearly wine country. Of the 50 largest US wineries, 34 call the Golden State home. Here are the most popular:

• Napa (4 wineries)
• St. Helena (4)
• Santa Rosa (3)
• Livermore (2)
• Healdsburg (2)

Napa’s top four wineries range in cases from 375K to 13 million. These include the Crimson Wine Group (375,000 cases), Delicato Family Wines (13,000,000), Hess Family Wine Estates (750,000), and JaM Cellars (600,000).

As for St. Helena’s top four wineries, the Trinchero Family Estates is the largest. It produced 20,000,000 cases of wine in 2020. Santa Rosa’s top three vineyards each produce cases in the seven digits while Livermore is home to the second-largest winery in the country (The Wine Group), in addition to another. Healdsburg’s top two vineyards result in fewer cases than the above.

Where else is wine made?

New York and Washington are home to three, including two U.S. branches of French brands—Pernod Ricard USA and Domaine Chandon Estates & Wines (Moët Hennessy USA)—in the Big Apple while two are based out of both Illinois and Oregon.

The 5th and 27th largest wine-sellers in the US are based internationally: Treasury Wine Estates (Melbourne, Australia-based) and NakedWines.com (Norwich, Great Britain). As for beer, check out Where U.S. Beer is Brewed.

Summarize What’s Below With Cluster View

You may think a map where 34 of the 50 locations are pinned in the same state wouldn’t be helpful. After all, so many markers in the same location can start to overlap, losing their ability to tell a useful story. However, you can actually opt to show fewer markers on the map without getting rid of any data.

With Cluster View, close markers are replaced with a summary icon that represents the multiple markers below. The icon is labeled with the number of markers it contains, but on your own maps, you can change it to show the average or sum of specific data. As you zoom into your map, you’ll see more and more individual markers.

Find how Cluster View can elevate your maps and start looking for the data you can visualize geographically.

Starting from scratch is hard. There’s a reason Betty Crocker cake mix flies off supermarket shelves: to save you time and help you get started. The same should be said about your favorite internet tools. This is where templates can come in handy, especially for things you find yourself repeating more than once, like making a spreadsheet of customers, identifying the locations of your leads, and mapping your geographic data.

Our Excel spreadsheet template points you in the right direction on your mapping journey, ensuring your data is perfectly formatted for our mapping tool. Of course, you’ll want to replace the location data (address, city, state, and ZIP) with your own. But the template even contains suggestions on how to organize any additional data like phone number, group, URL, and email for your custom map.

Spreadsheet Template Basics: Location

You can download the Excel spreadsheet template or copy and paste it into the spreadsheet tool of your choice (like Google Sheets). Upon opening up the template, you’ll note the first four columns are entirely dedicated to location data.

These key fields include:

• Address
• City
• State
• Zipcode

You’ll want to replace the template data with your own—copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) and paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) it in.

However, don’t feel obligated to fill in everything; not all the address fields are required. Most mapping tools can accurately plot your points with just one location detail, though the more you have, the more accurate your geocoding will be. You can delete entire unwanted columns from the template by right-clicking the column letter and opting for “Delete.”

As you’ll also note in the template, it’s best if each part of the location has its own column. For example, if your data is in the form of 1 Crossgates Mall Road Albany, NY 12203, most tools will do their best to interpret it. However, you can separate it into individual columns to be explicit, which reduces errors. To learn how to do that, see our article Simplify Complicated Data in Excel. Otherwise, continue on for how to use the template to prepare your data for mapping.

Include Your Location’s Name

Column E of the template is the name of your places that people will recognize. That way you don’t have to remember locations by their address. You’ll be able to use this information later to identify your locations on your map. For example, you could put a customer name or company name in this field.

You can copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) and paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own location names in place of the examples. The name of your location(s) is the last of the essential info you’ll need, though there is still some information that’s extremely helpful to have.

Add or Delete Additional Information

In addition to the necessary information about your locations, there’s additional data you may wish to include. Some suggested options are included in the template, such as:

• Phone number
• Group
• URL
• Email
• Deal value
• Sales volume

You can easily remove ones you don’t need by right-clicking the column letter and selecting “Delete.” You can also add your own columns to the spreadsheet (right-click → Insert). Say, Store Manage or whatever suits your data.

What happens to this additional data on your map? In addition to appearing in the info window, you’ll be able to group and filter what’s visible by any of your data once you make your map.

Make Your Custom Map

By using the Excel spreadsheet template, you’ve avoided starting from scratch, saving you ample time. Your spreadsheet is now perfectly primed to make a custom map just like the one below.

View Apple Stores Example in a full screen map

You can follow the simple steps below to make your own:

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
3. Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
4. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
5. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Validate and Set Options”
6. Select the proper location column from each drop-down
7. Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process

Find our Excel spreadsheet template on the homepage. You can refer to it each time you want to make a new map to ensure you’re on the right track.

Now that you know how to manipulate the template for your use, turn your own data into a customizable map with our spreadsheet template today.