Saturday, January 07, 2012

Hey, Google Analytics: Canada is not the 51st state (yet)

As a Canadian, I'm often pointing out Canadians and Canadians' achievements to my British colleagues. I'm sure they're sick of it by now. If you know a Canadian, you'll know I am not alone in this obsession.

Why do we do it?

We do it because we live all our lives in the shadow of the most powerful country on earth. We are innundated by US news, culture, music, movies, finance, business, politics etc. We're just looking for a little way to be noticed. So, when we have our chance we jump on it. That's why we bother pointing out that Michael J Fox, Christopher Plummer and more recently Ryan Gosling is Canadian (even though he's probably spent most his life in the US). It's our little way of jumping up and saying "we exist".

In Canada, we amuse ourselves by watching episodes of Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans and sharing stories of injustices to Canada's pride.

Today, even Rick Mercer's antics can't bring a smile to my face due to this Canadian injustice. Yes, it's true GOOGLE of all companies has committed the biggest sin. They have decided that Canada is not quite big enough to have their own map in Real Time Google Analytics.

Let' me expand. I work in the internet. I was investigating the origin of the visitors that visit our website using Google Analytics. As a Canadian, I was particularly interested in the Canadian cities where our visitors were from at that moment.

So, here is what happened I clicked on the link "Canada". On the left hand side of the screen I saw a list of familiar city names such as Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Richmond Hill (a suburb of Toronto), Guelph, Grand Prairie, Unionville and many more. Seeing those names made me feel close to home. Yet, when I cast my eye on the accompanying map, it wasn't a map of Canada at all. It was a map of the United States of America. What the ****? See for yourself ...


In case you are not familiar with the Canadian map, this is NOT a map of Canada. This is the map of Canada.



I'm sure you will recognize the first map as a map of the mighty United States of America. Yet, all the cities are floating in a blue sea north of the US border.

I guess it has finally come to pass, Canada is just the 51st state of the US. Please Google, sort that out to make this Canadian a little bit happier.