Blog
Short, friendly reads that turn map data into something anyone can act on - starting with what the score actually means and how you control it.
We write for real decisions, not data scientists. Each guide breaks a MapBees concept down into plain language, with the same live animations you see on the homepage. New here? The Guides group them by what they explain, starting with the four to read first.
Step-by-step pages for six customer jobs, from opening a café to finding underserved neighborhoods.
Browse use casesSee where MapBees fits beside GIS and location-analytics tools, and when another tool is the better choice.
Browse alternativesWhere are people likely to walk past? MapBees counts no one, but it can show how much a hex's timetable, streets and everyday places invite walking. Pedestrian potential puts the three on one 0–100 scale. Here it is on Houston, inside the city limits: how to read it, how to use it to choose a street, the math behind it, and - honestly - what it can't tell you.
Read the guidePick your stores, depots or clinics on the map and Closest colors every hex of the city by the one you can drive to soonest, up to an hour away, with the roads in the same colors. Here is how to use it on Melbourne with seven starting hexes, how to read the result, and - honestly - what it is not: not an exact catchment, and blind to the way real catchments overlap.
Read the guideCut Montreal into nine equal-looking slices and one sales rep gets downtown, with more restaurants in a few streets than another has in a whole suburb. Split evenly draws the areas from the data instead: nine joined-up areas inside the city boundary, each with about 897 places to eat and drink. Here is how to use it, how to read it, and the algorithm behind it - k-means++, a capacity-constrained power diagram and a polish.
Read the guideAcross most of London more cafés than pubs are within a 10-minute walk - but not everywhere. Here is the map type that shows it, Your formula (map algebra: a ratio, a share or a difference), its three shapes and what it refuses.
Read the guideAdd a CSV with lat and lon columns, or an h3 column, and each hex holds how many of your points are there, or the sum or average of a number. Your file stays in this browser; only hexes and their numbers travel with a map request.
Read the guideWant only the hexes where the most people live - the top 30% of London's hexes by residents? A Range keeps one span of a factor's values. Outside it, hide those hexes - a filter - or give them fewer points, sloping to zero like a trapezoidal membership function. Here is each on London.
Read the guideAcross London, all restaurants, shopping and beauty & spa places follow the pattern of cafés very closely, and the owner-occupier share goes the other way. Here is the card that says so - Same pattern - and the rank correlation behind its words.
Read the guideWithin a 10-minute walk of London's 3,106 café hexes, a pharmacy turns up 83% of the time - 2.0× as often as across the city. Here is the list that says so, Usually nearby, and the lift behind it.
Read the guideAbout 2 330 000 Londoners on the map live in a hex with no pharmacy within a 10-minute walk. Here is the control that finds them - Only where … (a boolean mask) - and how to read the muted map it draws.
Read the guideThe Clusters map finds busy and quiet stretches of a city, but not the exceptions inside them. One switch adds two verdicts - Busy among quiet and Quiet among busy - for a hex genuinely unlike the hexes around it. That is Local Moran's I, worked through with London's pubs.
Read the guideWhere can you do your daily errands on foot? Everyday needs counts how many of six kinds of place - grocery store, pharmacy, school, park, café, bakery - are within a 10-minute walk of each hex, from 0 of 6 to 6 of 6. Here is how How many kinds works, worked through in London.
Read the guideAbout 11,372 residents live within a 15-minute walk of Trafalgar Square: 827 within 5 minutes, 3,453 at 5–10 and 7,092 at 10–15. Here is how Catchment bands count them, how Reach weighs nearer places more, and how the Rush hour tab compares one drive at different times of the week.
Read the guideA single top hex can be a fluke; fifty neighboring hexes pointing the same way are a part of town. Standouts find those groups on any map type, outline them and number them #1, #2, #3 - each map ranking by what it measures. Grocery stores and cafés in London show how.
Read the guideA number on its own tells you little. 2.7× the London average tells you a lot. Here is the formula behind the Fair share map (the Location Quotient), worked through with cafés in London.
Read the guideTwo hexes with no grocery store are not the same: one has 3 000 residents, the other has 50. Gap analysis (leakage) tells them apart by counting how many are missing at the London rate. Here is how it works and how to read it.
Read the guideA bright stretch of map is not proof of anything - random scatter makes bright stretches too. The Clusters map runs the standard hot-spot test (Getis-Ord Gi*) and marks only the hexes where there is genuinely more, or less, around than chance would explain. Pubs in London show how, along with the odd ones out and Standouts on this map.
Read the guideForty restaurants that are all Italian and forty split across six cuisines are the same forty on a plain count. 'How mixed' (the Simpson index) tells them apart. Here it is, worked through with Italian, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican and Lebanese restaurants in London.
Read the guideIs the food scene here balanced, or is it one cuisine with a few token exceptions? 'How even' (Shannon evenness) answers exactly that, on a 0-1 scale. Here is the formula, and how it differs from 'How mixed', with six cuisines across London.
Read the guideTwo hexes both have one pharmacy. One has 300 residents, the other 6 000. A plain count says they are the same. 'Per 1 000 residents' says the first is twenty times better served. Here is the formula, and the small-numbers trap it has to avoid.
Read the guideA count of 3 means little on its own. 32 per km² is a number you can compare with any city on earth. Here is what 'Per km²' does, when to prefer it over 'Per 1 000 residents', and what it shows for bars across London.
Read the guideTen cafés in a hex is one story if they are the only ten food places, and another if they sit among two hundred restaurants. 'Share of its category' tells you which - here worked through with cafés as a share of everything to eat and drink in London.
Read the guideAn ATM two streets away is still your ATM. 'Within a 10-minute walk' counts the hexes you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths - full weight under 3.5 min, 70% to 7 min, 40% to 10 min - so the map shows what you can actually reach. ATMs in London, hex by hex and then by walk.
Read the guideThe usual score lets a strength cover for a weakness. Sometimes that is right; for site selection it often is not. 'Must be decent at everything' (the geometric mean, the way the UN Human Development Index works) scores a hex by its weakest link. Here is what changes on a London map.
Read the guideCafés are counted in units, population in people. Before a score can add them, every factor has to be placed on one scale. 'Where it ranks', 'How far from typical' and 'Lowest to highest' are three honest ways to do that, and they give different maps. Here is each one on London.
Read the guideType what you're actually trying to do - "a coffee shop somewhere busy in Houston" - and Scout Bee sets up the map, shows you exactly what it changed, keeps your own changes, and lets you undo it. Here is everything it can do, using Houston throughout.
Read the guideEvery colored hex on the map carries a score from 0–100 answering one question: how good is this exact hex for what you care about? Here is what that number means, how you shape it, and how its hex card shows why - in plain language, on London.
Read the guideA Cross two map (the field calls it a bivariate map) shades every hex by two measures at once. Using residential plus outbuilding volume vs. total population in New York City, here is how to read the colors, the units, the real band edges under the legend, and the classification the map chose for each axis - in plain language.
Read the guideWant to know how much of the local customers a store would actually win - and how much your own stores steal from each other? This step-by-step guide walks you through the Market Share tool from the first click to the final report, with no jargon.
Read the guideWant to draw a sales territory, franchise area, or store catchment - or bring yours in from a file - and see how many people, shops, and buildings are inside, and where two areas overlap? This guide walks you through Territory Mapping in London, from the first pin to the full dashboard, with no jargon.
Read the guideWant one page that shows what MapBees actually supports? This guide lists supported countries and cities, the main data categories, and how the Score, the other map types, Cross two, Your formula, market share, and territory mapping use those measures.
Read the guideA searchable index of all 2,037 measures behind a MapBees score — what each one measures, which countries publish it, and how many cities actually carry it.
Read the guideThe same guides, grouped by what they explain. Read the first four in order; after that, start wherever your question is.
Read these four guides in order: how a hex gets its score, how each factor is placed, how the factors combine, and how to ask Scout Bee.
Turn a count into something you can compare: per km², per 1 000 residents, a share of its category, within a 10-minute walk, a range, or your own formula.
Three ways to read how varied the places in a hex are: how even (Shannon), how mixed (Simpson), and how many kinds, with Everyday needs.
Read what stands out on a map: Clusters, the odd ones out, Fair share, Missing, Same pattern, Usually nearby, Standouts and Cross two.
Work from pins, stores and drawn areas: catchment bands and Rush hour, Territory Mapping, Market Share, Split evenly, Closest, and Only where.
Bring your own file of points, read Pedestrian potential, and look up every measure MapBees has, with the cities and countries it covers.
