Stats: Replace "European Union" with "Europe"

[SiobhyB]

If WordPress.com can't determine the country that a person is visiting from but knows they're located in Europe, their visit will be listed as coming from the "European Union" in the "Countries" section of the site's stats:

This doesn't really make sense as the European Union is not a country or a continent. It's a political union of (currently) 28 countries within Europe.

At the moment, visits from countries like Norway or Iceland could potentially be recorded as a visit from the European Union despite the fact those countries aren't actually part of the Union.

Replacing "European Union" with "Europe" would be a more accurate description.

Context / Source

perspective #reallife

[lcollette]

The countries listed come from the Google API. In theory, we could listen for the European Union country code and update it on our side but I'd say this is a low priority.

[SiobhyB]

@lcollette: It surprises me that Google would make a mistake like that, it's a bit exclusionary. I've only been able to find references to "EU" in my searches. Can you point me to exactly where the API references the European Union?

[SiobhyB]

To clarify:

EU = Europe, a continent with a country code. The European Union = a political grouping of 28 countries. It's not a country and doesn't have a country code.

[cathymcbride]

Closing due to inactivity.

[SiobhyB]

@cathymcbride, I'm curious about this, as the inaccuracy is still there in our stats. I think the Europe Union's great, but it's simply not accurate to refer to it as a country or a continent, it's a political union. The mistake may come across as misleading, ignorant, or even exclusionary to some users. It seems like a quick win to correct it on our side.

(We're getting the "EU" code from Google but, as far as I can see, the "European Union" label is coming from WordPress.com. Am I missing something here?)

[cathymcbride]

@SiobhyB Thank you for your comments. I'm going to open this back up to see if this is as easy as a string change.

[Aurorum]

This should be easy to fix, and while I agree that the current state is confusing, I do wonder if people might not be equally confused if this was replaced to say "Europe". My instinct would be to say "why do I have a low number of views from Europe and so many more from countries actually within Europe?".

I'm still not sure of the answer to that question; for example, I have 1319 views from the "European Union" but 17K from Italy. I would've thought that those Italian views would've been included under "European Union" (or "Europe" if this issue is updated) but they're not, and even if they were, it's a little strange for them to appear under a tab saying "Countries".

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