Website Traffic Map: See Where Your Visitors Come From Without Storing Personal Data

GhostlyX now includes a Traffic Map: an interactive, world-wide view of where your website visitors come from. It displays city-level data on a zoomable map alongside a country breakdown, and it does this without collecting any personal data, setting any cookies, or identifying individual visitors.

The Traffic Map is available on the Business and Scale plans.

What the Traffic Map shows

The Traffic Map displays the geographic distribution of your website traffic across two views.

The first is the map itself: an interactive world map where cities appear as circular markers. Each marker is sized according to how many visitors came from that city. The larger the circle, the more visitors. You can zoom into any region to explore city-level detail for areas with high traffic density.

The second is the country breakdown: a ranked list of countries below the map, each showing visitor count and its percentage share of total traffic for the selected period.

You can filter data by four time periods: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 12 months. If you manage multiple sites or have been added to a site as a team member, you can switch between them using the site selector at the top of the page.

How traffic hotspots are colour-coded

City markers are colour-coded by traffic rank to help you identify your most active locations at a glance.

• Red markers are top hotspots: the busiest 20% of cities for the selected period
• Amber markers are busy locations: the next 30% by visitor count
• Green markers are lower-traffic locations: the remaining 50% of cities

The colours are always relative to your own data for the current period. If your site receives visitors from ten cities, the two busiest will always appear red, the next three amber, and the remaining five green. This means the colour scale is always meaningful regardless of your total traffic volume.

The 10-visitor minimum

Cities with ten or fewer distinct visitors do not appear on the map. This threshold exists to protect the privacy of visitors in low-traffic locations. A city with only two or three visits in a given period could, in theory, correspond to a very small number of people. By excluding these locations from the map, GhostlyX ensures that no individual visitor could ever be identified or singled out based on their location.

This minimum applies to all plans and cannot be changed.

How the data is collected

GhostlyX determines visitor location from the partial IP address of each incoming request, using a local geolocation database to look up the city and country. The partial IP address itself is never stored. Once the lookup is complete, only the city name and country code are retained, with no connection to the IP or any other identifier.

The result is a count of visits per city. That is the only data the Traffic Map uses.

No cookies are set during this process. No session identifiers are created. No visitor profile is built. Each request is processed independently, and there is no mechanism in place to link one visit to another.

What GhostlyX does not collect

The Traffic Map shows you city-level aggregates. It does not show and has no access to:

• Individual visitor records
• Partial IP addresses (these are discarded after the geolocation lookup)
• Device identifiers or fingerprints
• Precise location data (street, postcode, or coordinates of individuals)
• Any information that could identify a specific person

The data behind the Traffic Map is indistinguishable from a simple tally: "London: 142 visitors, Manchester: 67 visitors." There is no way to drill down to individual visits within a city.

Privacy signals are respected

The Traffic Map, like all GhostlyX tracking, respects Global Privacy Control (GPC) and Do Not Track (DNT) signals sent by a visitor's browser. If a visitor has indicated through either of these mechanisms that they do not want to be tracked, no data is collected for that request and that visitor does not appear in any analytics, including the Traffic Map.

Visitors can also opt out directly via the GhostlyX opt-out page, which sets a browser-level flag that stops all data collection for that browser on any site using GhostlyX.

No consent banner required

Because the Traffic Map collects no personal data and sets no cookies, it does not trigger consent requirements under GDPR or similar regulations. You do not need to add a new entry to your cookie consent banner or establish a data processing agreement for this feature.

This applies globally. The same data model is used for all visitors regardless of their country.

Which plans include the Traffic Map

The Traffic Map is available on the Business and Scale plans. If you are on the Starter plan, you will see a preview of the feature in your dashboard. Upgrading to Business or Scale unlocks full access, including all time-period filters and multi-site support.

You can upgrade from your billing settings at any time.

How to use the Traffic Map

1. Open the Traffic Map section from your dashboard sidebar.
2. Use the site search field to select the site you want to analyse.
3. Choose a time period using the buttons at the top right: 7d, 30d, 90d, or 12m.
4. Zoom into any region on the map to explore city-level detail.
5. Scroll below the map to see the full country breakdown.

The map loads data fresh each time you select a site or change the period. If your site is new or has recently added traffic from new regions, allow a short time for data to accumulate before expecting city markers to appear.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Does the Traffic Map use cookies? A: No. The Traffic Map sets no cookies and requires no cookie consent. Location is determined from the Partial IP address of each request at the point of collection, and the Partial IP address is then discarded. No persistent identifier of any kind is stored.

Q: Can I see which individual visitors came from a specific city? A: No. The Traffic Map shows aggregate counts only. There is no record linking a city to a specific person, session, or page view. The data is a simple tally of visits per city, with no individual dimension.

Q: Why do some cities not appear on the map? A: Cities with ten or fewer distinct visitors are hidden. This threshold protects the privacy of visitors in low-traffic locations where a small count could correspond to a very small number of individuals.

Q: Does the Traffic Map comply with GDPR? A: GhostlyX does not collect personal data, so standard GDPR obligations around consent and data subject rights do not apply to the data behind the Traffic Map. Partial IP addresses are discarded after the geolocation lookup and are never stored. Only anonymous city-level counts are retained.

Q: What do the red, amber, and green marker colours mean? A: The colours indicate traffic rank for the current period. Red markers are your busiest cities (top 20% by visitor count), amber markers are busy locations (the next 30%), and green markers are lower-traffic cities (the remaining 50%). The ranking is always relative to your own data, not a fixed threshold.

Q: Which plans include the Traffic Map? A: The Traffic Map is available on the Business and Scale plans. Starter plan users can see a preview of the feature but will need to upgrade to access live data.