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Maps of Web Sites

Web site maps are created by webmasters and content providers to help users navigate and search complex web sites. A variety of styles of map are used, many based on organisational charts. Presented here are some of the best examples from around the Web.

Ptolomaeus - the Web cartographer, a nice tool for graphing the hierarchical structure of Web sites being developed by Fabio Vernacotola and colleagues in the Department of Informatica ed Automazione at the University of Roma Tre, Italy.



This underground-style map was used on the Yell Guides web site.

Organisational chart type site maps. For example, Apple or Hilton Hotels Hilton.com web site. (Apple have since adopted a much more conventional site map.)

Dynamic Diagrams Inc. are a leading company in designing web site maps and navigation tools. One of the graphic styles they use is to maps sites in a perspective view, with individual web pages sticking up, a bit like a card index. A good example of these is shown below, a map of Britannica Online.

Dynamic Diagrams have a Java product called MAPA, which produces interactive web site maps. Two example MAPA web site maps are shown below, one for IBM Corporation's web site and the other for part of Dynamic Diagrams's own web site.

A Web site map produced using Structured Graph Format (SGF). It is an XML format language designed to describe the structure of Web sites. A Java SGF viewer is used to interact with the map. SGF is being developed by Olivier Liechti, Mark J. Sifer and Tadao Ichikawa at Hiroshima University, Japan.



Another product called MerzScope, from MerzCom Inc. produces dynamic views of web site as a topology maps. An interesting aspect of MerzScope maps is the ability to interactively change the map "scale" by zooming in and out, revealing different levels of detail on the site. The example shown left is is MerzScope topology map of Teleglobe's web site.

Mapuccino is a neat Java application for dynamically constructing interactive visual maps of Web sites developed by the IBM's Haifa Research Lab in Israel. Several different graphic styles of maps are available, including the horizontal tree and fish-eye views shown in the screen-shots below.

Web site maps can also be created by site management tools. These software tools are designed to aid webmasters to visualise and manage large, complex web sites. We present screen-shots of from four of the best site management tools to give you an idea of the type of maps they produce.

Below are screen-shots from Visual Web and Microsoft's Site Analyst (which has become submerged in their BackOffice bloatware).

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Shown above are Astra SiteManger and CLEARweb screen-shots.



Site Manager from Silicon Graphics, a web site visualisation tool.


A screen-shot of I/O/D 4 Web Stalker, an interesting, but somewhat experimental, web browser which includes mapping functions.



Nicheworks is a interactive tool for visualising massive networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes. It was developed by Graham Wills at Bell Labs. The screen-shots here show Nicheworks visualisation of the network structure of a large Web site.





To find out more on the types and styles of web site maps you are recommended to consult Paul Kahn's seminar "Mapping Web Sites" .

[ Introduction | Conceptual | Artistic | Geographic | Cables & Satellites | Traceroutes | Census
| Topology | Info Maps | Info Landscapes | Info Spaces | ISP Maps | Web Site Maps | Surf Maps | Historical ]
(© Copyright - Martin Dodge, 1999.)