Author: Adam DuVander

Emojis have become essential for communication in our daily lives. While the most popular emojis help express tone or feeling, the round pushpin indicates something just as important: a location where you’ve been or where you want to go. It also happens to be the unofficial icon of one of the most popular web mapping services, Google Maps.

While most people are familiar with obtaining directions from the mega-mapping platform, users often have questions about how to drop a pin and save it. Attempts to drop a pin in Google Maps may result in a search for nearby places—without the option to save or even label it. But there’s another mapping platform where mapping and saving pins is more intuitive—and it utilizes the Google Maps API for its geocoding process.

Create a Spreadsheet of Locations to Pin

Of course, if you’re looking to place a pin on Google Maps, you must first have a location (or two!) in mind. You can take your desired locations, in the form of a spreadsheet, and easily map and display them on a custom Google Map with the help of BatchGeo. BatchGeo performs everything you need to put a pin or pins on Google Maps in just a few easy steps, as noted below.

• Add the location of your desired pin(s) to a spreadsheet. Excel, Google Sheets, or any other spreadsheet tool will suffice, as long as you’re able to copy and paste.
• Dedicate at least one column of your spreadsheet to the location information of your desired pin(s). Any of the following location data will work:
  • Addresses
  • City names
  • State names
  • Postal codes
  • Country names
  • Latitude and longitude coordinates

You can even map landmarks and business names. In fact, most of what you search for in Google Maps can be used in BatchGeo. Now let’s map your locations, whether the Eiffel tower landmark or your sister’s new address in Spain.

Map One or More of Your Pins

Once you have your spreadsheet with your location data, you’re ready to create a pinned map just like the one below.

View Single pin map in a full screen map

To do so:

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

You can add multiple pins to the same map by adding additional locations to your spreadsheet. With this added data, you may also find it helpful to include more columns of information. One common example is a type column, a way to assign categories to your data. But you could also include separate columns for length, height, etc., depending on your information. After adding additional columns, follow the same steps noted above.

View Multi-pin map in a full screen map

Having multiple locations unlocks the ability to group and filter your map by any additional columns from your spreadsheet. And after you’ve created your map, there are just two things left to do. The first is to save your pins. Then, ultimately, you may wish to share your map.

Save & Share Your Pins on Google Maps

With your pins mapped, you’ll want to ensure you click Save. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to access your map on any device by visiting its custom URL. But your eyes don’t have to be the only ones that get to see your saved map. You may wish to share your pins of locations where you’ve been or where you want to go with friends, family, or followers.

You can share your maps on social media a handful of ways, the easiest being via URL. Copy the URL from your web browser (which always starts with batchgeo.com/map/). Paste the link into a text to your mom, an email to a buddy, or even a tweet to all your followers. And it’s just as simple to embed your maps into your website’s homepage or blog post with batchgeo.com.

As Joe Biden ascends the steps of the White House, many are looking back at his path to the United States presidency. How did he beat the incumbent to the highest office in the nation, something that hadn’t been done since Bill Clinton trumped George H. W. Bush in 1992? The electoral votes determined the race, Biden: 306, Trump: 232, but let’s take a look behind those votes in Biden’s road to 270+. Which states were nearly unanimous and how did third parties fare this election cycle? All are shown on the map below.

View 2020 Election in a full screen map

The data is from Wikipedia’s ‘Results by state’ section of the 2020 United States presidential election page. You’re able to sort the map by Ticket & Party, the number of votes, percentage, and electoral votes. Let’s see which states were closest to unanimous in this unprecedented election.

Nearly Unanimous States

The Biden/Harris duo won the 2020 election with 306 electoral votes and 51.31% of the vote. Meanwhile, the Trump/Pence team exits the oval office with 232 electoral votes and 46.86% of the vote. But we wondered which areas of the country leaned more unanimously towards one pair of candidates or the other (or perhaps a third-party?). Find out where in the U.S. below.

State or district	Ticket & party	%
Washington D.C.	Biden/Harris Democratic	92.15%
Nebraska-3	Trump/Pence Republican	75.36%
Wyoming	Trump/Pence Republican	69.94%
West Virginia	Trump/Pence Republican	68.62%
Vermont	Biden/Harris Democratic	66.09%
Massachusetts	Biden/Harris Democratic	65.60%
Oklahoma	Trump/Pence Republican	65.37%
Maryland	Biden/Harris Democratic	65.36%
North Dakota	Trump/Pence Republican	65.11%
Idaho	Trump/Pence Republican	63.84%

Voters in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., were 92.15% in favor of Joe Biden to be POTUS #46. This is up from 2016 in which 90.48% of D.C. voted blue. In fact, in all of the capital’s history as the only non-state to have electoral votes, theirs have never gone to the GOP. Both Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by congressional districts and Nebraska’s 3rd district had the second-highest percentage, in this case, 75.36% for Trump’s re-election.

The first state with a significant majority was Wyoming with 69.94% of voters casting ballots for Trump and Pence. West Virginia closely follows, along with Vermont, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Maryland for Biden. Meanwhile, North Dakotans and Idahoans showed up for Trump. Now let’s see how third parties did in 2020.

Third Parties With A Million Votes

A minor or third-party is one other than the two major parties, currently Democrat and Republican. In 2020, the largest third parties in the U.S. were the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution Party. So just how far did any third-party candidate make it in the 2020 election? No minor party took away electoral votes from either the Biden/Harris ticket or that of Trump/Pence (all 538 went to one or the other). However, a third-party ticket did score 1,865,720 votes.

Libertarian Party

The third-party ticket with 1,865,720 votes was Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen of the Libertarian Party. While that may seem like a lot, those million-plus votes make up just 1.18% of the total votes. Additionally, in comparison, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gained 4,489,221 votes in 2016 (3.28%).

Percentage-wise, Jorgensen and Cohen did best (over 2%) in the following 10 states: South Dakota (2.63%), North Dakota (2.60%), Utah (2.58%), Montana (2.53%), Alaska (2.47%), Nebraska’s 1st congressional district (2.33%), Kansas (2.23%), Nebraska (2.12%), Wyoming (2.08%), and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district (2.03%). That leaves the other minor parties with thousands of votes in the 2020 presidential election.

The Green Party & Others

The other significant third-party player, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker of the Green Party received 405,034 votes or 0.26% in total. In 2016, the Green Party’s Jill Stein had 1,457,216 or 1.07% total. The 2020 ticket did best in Maine’s 1st congressional district with 1.05% of the vote and the next best in Maine’s second district (0.95%).

Other parties, which amassed 627,567 votes (0.40%), included write-ins. To learn more about them, check out the map, or continue for how to make your own.

Publish Maps On Your Site

Maps are a useful tool to help you visualize your location data—addresses, cities, etc. You may even discover something you missed in your spreadsheet!

To make your own map, be it a historical look at 100 years ago in 1921 or political canvassing maps for door-to-door volunteers, just copy your spreadsheet data. Then, paste it into our simple mapping tool.

With your data newly displayed in your map, you can embed it in your website or share it with fellow map enthusiasts. Get started today with BatchGeo.

2020 was an eventful year. The novel coronavirus, unprecedented wildfires, and the largest protests in history peppered the news throughout the span of just 366 days. Take a break from the events of this century to instead look back at the major events 100 years in the past.

In 1921, the world experienced innovations in health, science, and education, including the first vaccination against tuberculosis. Major events in sports included Harvard University’s loss to Centre College in American football. For decades afterward, this was called “football’s upset of the century.” Yet the world also faced repercussions of the First World War (the Leipzig War Crimes Trials began in Germany) along with other wars like the Irish War of Independence, revolutions, uprisings, riots, and strikes. Take a look at these events on the map below.

View Major 1921 Events in a full screen map

Data from Wikipedia was used to make the map, which you can group by 1921 event categories, such as “Health, Science, & Education.” To learn more about each of the nine categories, read on.

Health, Science, & Education

One hundred years ago, an infectious disease was spreading. Nope, not the Spanish flu, which had raged in 1918-1920. During the same period, tuberculosis (TB) caused one in six French deaths by 1918. But in 1921, a Paris newborn received the first BCG vaccination against tuberculosis. However, the vaccine was only widely used in the U.S., Britain, and Germany after the Second World War. Additional events include:

• Insulin was first discovered by researchers at the University of Toronto
• The first birth control clinic opened in the British Empire
• The U.S.’s Science Service (renamed Society for Science & the Public) was founded to keep the public informed of scientific developments
• Teaching began at the University of Szeged in the Kingdom of Hungary
• Visva-Bharati College was founded

But the creation of a TB vaccine, birth control clinics, and various colleges and universities weren’t the only noteworthy accomplishments of the year. There were also many firsts in sports.

Sports in 1921

Most of 1921’s major events in the sporting world were related to the U.S.’s incorporation of the radio. For example, the first radio baseball game was broadcast in Pittsburgh along with the first radio broadcast of a World Series game in Newark, New Jersey.

International athletic achievements from the year included the creation of the Association football club Cruzeiro Esporte Clube in Brazil and the Australia national cricket team’s whitewash (also known as a sweep, or when a team wins all games) in The Ashes, something that would not be repeated for 86 years. Additionally, the 1921 Women’s Olympiad (the first international women’s sports event) began in Monte Carlo.

Now let’s examine the political landscape of the year.

1921: A Post-War World

This year was part of the post-World War I era. While the war officially ended from 1914 until November 1918, the effects lasted for years afterward. The key Post-WWI events of 1921 included:

• The Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci, which sunk in 1916, was raised via pontoons and compressed air in Taranto Harbour
• Allies take three German cities (Düsseldorf, Ruhrort, and Duisburg)
• The Allied reparations commission declares Germany and other Central Powers will owe 2.5 billion gold marks per year in World War I reparations, totaling 32 billion ($33 trillion)
• The Leipzig War Crimes Trials prosecuted 12 German war criminals
• The U.S. officially ends its war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary after President Harding signs a resolution
• The Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Soviet Socialist Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia sign the Treaty of Kars, which establishes boundaries
• Germany faces hyperinflation. Previously, in April 1919, 12 German marks bought $1 but now it takes more than 20x that amount (263 marks)

Note that most of these events were tied to Germany: Allied occupation of German cities, War Crimes Trials, hyperinflation, and the specifics of World War I reparations from London. As Britain laid down Germany’s repayment plan, they were in the midst of another war.

Other Wars, Revolutions, Riots, & Strikes

Britain’s other war was the Irish War of Independence, which had been ongoing since 1919. But in 1921, a ceasefire was called in July. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December of the same year, ending British rule in most of Ireland. View the rest of the revolutions, riots, and strikes of 1921 by grouping by the category on the map.

Get More From Your Map With Grouping

We’re always on the lookout for more: more sleep, dessert seconds, etc. How about more information about the data you already have? When you’re looking to map your data, you often find yourself with more than just location information. With our free mapping tool, you can map your spreadsheet with the option to group together any remaining data.

You and your map’s users will be able to select only the markers that meet certain requirements, filtering out the rest. Groups can be combined to zero in on very specific results, giving you insight into the story behind the map. Learn more about map grouping and be sure to check out our previous 100 years later posts: 100 years since 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1920.