Fusion Tables for Fast Maps

When you want to create a quick and dirty map to go along with a story, try using a Fusion Table from Google Docs. It's a pretty easy way to visualize data and embed it straight into an article as a map, or chart.

First though, determine if the article even needs a map. Is it a single event occuring in one location? Then no, we don't need to see it on a map. Are there multiple locations with related occurrences? Then yes, map the heck out of 'em.

That's some useful data visualization.

The Basic How To

Fusion Tables is a Google product, so first you're gonna need an account with them.

Gather up your data onto a spreadsheet, either within Google Docs, or on something like Excel. For a simple map you'll need at least two things, the name and location of the item to be mapped. The location can be in lattitude and longitude format, but a simple street address will work also. Save the document when you're done. If you're using an excel sheet, save that document as a .csv file.

Go into your Google Docs account and select Create then Table. (Don't worry that it says beta next to Table, we're on the cutting edge here.) Now, upload that spreadsheet you just created into the Fusion Table:

Selecting Next will allow you to review the table being uploaded. If satisfactory, keep clicking Next and your table will be created. Review the table, make sure everything is in the right place. When you're ready to create the map, select Visualize, then on the dropdown click Map:

This should bring you to the newly created map. Here you can zoom in, check it out, make sure all the points and address transferred over. If they haven't, select Visualize Table, to go back into the table and manually select the addresses and verify their correct location.

Alright, we've got a map to publish, now we just need to get it from here and into the article on your site. To do this, you'll need the embed link code.

To get the code, you'll first need to make the map public. Select the Share button at the top right of the page, then on the pop-up menu change the visibility options to public.

Now that the map is Public, you'll see a Get Embeddable Link link. Grab that code and insert it into the story. You'll probably have to switch over to html in the text editor of your content management system to get it to work corrrectly. Same idea as embedding a YouTube video.

When complete, you'll have a nice clickable map right on your page:

Once you get the hang of creating a map, take some time to explore other ways fusion tables can be used to visualize data. It's a pretty powerful tool for journalists and publishers.