The Geospatial Web

Based on a lexical analysis of crawled Web data, the diagram summarizes the number of references to geospatial platforms in online news media. A total of 129 Web sites were mirrored in quarterly intervals between May 2005 and January 2006 (various directories were used to determine the most important news media in seven English-speaking countries: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand).

Between Q2/2005 and Q1/2006, coverage on 2D and 3D platforms increased significantly by more than 300 and 1,100 percent, respectively (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks; p < 0.05). With 83 percent of the coverage, Google Earth has been the primary driver behind the observable increase in popularity of geospatial platforms (please note that Google Earth was only launched in June 2005 and therefore did not receive any mentions in Q2/2005).

Source: Chapter 1, page 13.