MAP EXPLAINER

What the map shows—and what it cannot

Atlas Area Watch combines stored Atlas Earth leaderboard snapshots with geographic boundary datasets. It is useful for exploring rankings, but a colored polygon is not proof that Atlas uses exactly that boundary.

The quick rule

Read the leaderboard title in the side panel. If the panel says an area uses the containing county leaderboard, the shape is only a geographic fallback—not a verified Atlas town.

How to use the map

Choose a country, state, prefecture, or other region from the map or sidebar.
Search for a town, county, state, or prefecture, or select a polygon directly. Choosing a search result moves the map to its exact verified polygon when one is available; broader results focus the matching regional boundary.
Use the tabs to switch between local, state or prefecture, and national leaderboards when available.
Select a player to view the public profile details stored by the latest completed scan.

Map colors summarize the leader's parcel margin. Orange means the lead is 10 parcels or fewer, or 5% or less of the leader's parcel total. Green means a populated board is outside both close-race thresholds; a board with only one ranked owner is also green. Gray means the area is not mapped to a verified populated leaderboard. A color describes the stored snapshot, not live gameplay.

Searching and map navigation

Global search combines saved leaderboards with verified requestable places. A saved town or county opens its leaderboard and zooms to its mapped polygon. A state or prefecture focuses its full boundary. A verified town without a saved leaderboard still opens the correct official polygon and offers a one-time leaderboard check.

Search uses official boundary identities rather than guessing from a displayed name. This matters when two municipalities share a name. If a result does not move the map, the place may be requestable in Atlas but not yet reconciled to a public polygon.

Checking or updating a leaderboard

Choose Check leaderboard for a place with no saved snapshot, or Update now for a saved request-only place.
Complete the verification challenge. Requests are rate-limited and processed through one private queue so simultaneous requests cannot collide with another Atlas scan.
When Atlas responds, a privacy-safe preview appears in the existing panel. You can keep using the map while the complete snapshot is validated and published.
After permanent publication, the leaderboard refreshes in place without resetting the selected area, map center, zoom, or surrounding interface.

A requested snapshot is persistent but not automatically tracked. It remains available after publication, but it does not join the recurring scan schedule unless it is separately added to tracking.

Exact mappings and county fallbacks

Verified local board: The polygon is associated with a specific Atlas leaderboard using name, path, parcel-owner, and collision checks. This is our strongest mapping, but it is still an independently reconstructed match.
County fallback: No local board cleared the evidence threshold, so the polygon displays its containing county's leaderboard. Several neighboring shapes can therefore show the same county data.
Verified and requestable: The Atlas identity and official polygon are matched, but no saved leaderboard may exist yet. The map can still focus the place and offer a one-time check.
No verified board: We do not have enough evidence to attach an Atlas leaderboard safely. The official polygon may remain visible without a request action rather than being linked by guesswork.

Scheduled tracking versus requested snapshots

Scheduled boards are refreshed by an adaptive scan plan. Important or newly discovered boards are checked more often, while the wider catalog rotates over longer intervals. Request-only snapshots are different: they are checked when someone asks and then preserved, but are not repeatedly scanned by default.

The status beside a saved leaderboard describes the age of its stored snapshot:

Fresh: Captured less than 2 days ago.
Weekly rotation: Captured 2 to less than 8 days ago.
Monthly rotation: Captured 8 to less than 31 days ago.
Stale: Captured 31 or more days ago. The snapshot remains visible until a newer complete result is published.

Current geographic coverage

The map includes all U.S. states with browseable town and county geography, all 47 Japanese prefectures, and detailed published coverage in Singapore, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, and selected Japanese areas. It also includes verified requestable municipality maps for several additional European countries.

Coverage is not the same as a guaranteed leaderboard. Some polygons have recurring snapshots, some have persistent request-only snapshots, some are verified and ready to check, and others remain visible but deliberately unlinked until their Atlas identity can be proven.

South Korea: Atlas title borders

South Korea includes all 17 province-level regions and 1,187 local Atlas title areas. These outlines come from Atlas’s displayed title borders, not replacement administrative boundaries. Local titles can be neighborhoods, towns, cities, or counties; their boundaries may overlap or include coastal waters.

Names use Atlas’s romanized place names. Ongjin County’s local outline is withheld because its source geometry could not be verified safely. A province outline does not imply that every local title within it is mapped.

Why a place can look wrong or missing

Atlas and government geography are different systems. The map uses Census, municipal, or other public boundary data as a starting point; Atlas can divide or name places differently.
Names and URL slugs are not always predictable. Punctuation, abbreviations, “Saint” versus “St,” numbered duplicates, and local naming conventions can lead to a different Atlas path.
Old and new municipalities can coexist imperfectly. Atlas may retain a former city identity after a merger or rename while current boundary sources show the successor municipality.
Townships, villages, cities, and counties can overlap. Selecting the smallest visible polygon usually helps, but overlapping legal geographies do not always translate cleanly to one Atlas board.
Some Atlas areas span multiple shapes. Islands, detached land, or Atlas-native map fragments may appear as a multipolygon. Missing fragments can make a boundary look clipped until independently verified.
Empty or stale source responses are preserved safely. A failed or partial scan is not published over the last good snapshot. The timestamp shows when the displayed data was captured.

Data and freshness

The site publishes complete stored snapshots after validation. Normal map and leaderboard files are fully static and do not call Atlas from your browser. An on-demand request is sent to a public queue; the private scanner performs the Atlas check separately. This is not a real-time feed, so scan time, publication time, and the current state inside the game may differ.

Leaderboard history reflects only successful snapshots retained by this project. A gap means no usable snapshot was published; it does not imply that nothing changed in Atlas.

Independence and reporting errors

Atlas Area Watch is an independent community project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlas Earth. Atlas Earth names and leaderboard data belong to their respective owners. Base-map data is credited on the map.

If a board or border appears wrong, the most useful evidence is the place name, the Atlas leaderboard URL, and a short description of what the map should show.

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