Guess The Map

(archipelago->peninsula sorry)

It could be that people don't live there. Vacation destinations would tie in with the coastal differences in France, Florida, Turkey and the others

life expectancy?
or its direct opposite. levels of violence?

herring consumption

nope

it's something really basic

but i can give a better clue if you want one

concentration of german bank branches

no

the thing that sticks out to me is yellow in the southwestern us, some of those places are podunkville

Mercedes Benz ownership

nah

sewage piping

The pins got me thinking are they the most visited places in the world by tourists?

I think thats right, and would explain why the coastal strips are yellow in some places, much more so than adjacent interiors

the thing that sticks out to me is yellow in the southwestern us, some of those places are podunkville

Canyons?

getting close Dan

Well, I mean you almost nailed it but the specific is different

I found it by googling but I won't spoil

cool you can help with the replies, when i aint' here but dan almost got it so might not be long before a result.

Something to do with transport? Highest concentration of cars, busiest roads, something like that?

Airbnb density?

Immigrant proportion of population?

it's related to/a consequence of what Dan guessed

extensive underground cave networks?

canon cameras are sold

elevation above or below sea level since all the mountains have been levelled recently.

your second one is very close, combine with Dan's guess :-)

Something to do with where tourist photos have been geotagged?

I would call that 99% correct - I hope Ste agrees but I'll reveal...

it's a "touristiness" heatmap of the most photographed places based on photographs submitted to Panoramio. -> https://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2012/01/world-tourism-heatmaps.html

That explains some of the more remote pins. Niagara Falls, Pyramids etc

Looks like it, explains the canyons and the coastal strips too

yeah i'll take that

that was great! thanks :-)

https://i.ibb.co/yR7Rn5b/map.png

why is that so small? hmm

PAL regions

i'm wrong, japan wasn't PAL.

let's try another site then, this shouldn't be shrunk like the first attempt:

https://i.postimg.cc/hGKjB3gf/map.gif

My first guess (daylight saving time) was wrong but I'm also thinking it's tech related
Excludes some EU+EFTA members like Poland, Hungary etc
Inclusion of all those oversea territories is probably key

western europe, australia and new zealand, antarctica, japan, hong kong, a bunch of island nations.

japan and hong kong seem significant, but why antarctica?

the exclusion of the US and Canada seems important

that one green dot just north of venezuela appears to be bonaire (dutch). the other caribbean green dots are too crowded for me to make out, but they're *not* dutch

also curious that hong kong and macau are included

I was thinking signatories to an Antarctic treaty or something but that doesn't check out. Must be something regulatory though, given how the overseas territories of a country all line up.

I'm guessing some sort of environmental regulation.

Or banking regulations? It seems neither Isle of Man or the Channel Islands are green. Another oddity: Estonia and Latvia are green but Lithuania isn't.

None of the guesses are even close so far.

a clue: green means not

side of the road people drive on?

Do they have a side of the road in Antarctica?

Given Stan's hint, I'm guessing the green countries do not have a law discriminating against something that the other countries do. A bit flummoxed by Antarctica though.

Antarctica, remote Island Nations, Western Europe, Australia/NZ, that don't have something.

Most of these places are either isolated, tiny, or likely to have controls of some sort. So its some kind of bad flora/fauna/disease that they don't have

Lithuania and Poland the counter to that, if there are no border checks?