What Counts as 'Visited'? A Practical Rulebook for Your Visited Countries Map

"Visited" is not a legal standard. It's your personal definition. The only way to keep a visited countries map consistent is to pick rules you can defend, then apply them every time.

This rulebook gives you three clear tiers (strict, standard, loose), plus policies for layovers, cruises, border towns, and territories. DaysAround helps you enforce your definition across years by rebuilding your history from on-device photo metadata, then letting you confirm or correct the edge cases without uploading anything.

Start with one baseline definition (then never change it)

A visited countries tracker is only as good as its rules. If your rules change year to year, your count becomes meaningless.

Here are three defensible definitions you can choose from. DaysAround works with any of them because it reconstructs where you were from photo timestamps and GPS, then lets you confirm what you consider "visited."

Rule tier	Definition of "visited"	Best for	Tradeoff
Strict	Visited = you legally entered (cleared immigration) and were present in the territory	Visa compliance mindset, tax residency tracking, people who want auditability	Under-counts quick stops where you never passed immigration
Standard	Visited = you went landside (left the transit zone)	Most travelers, practical and consistent	Still has edge cases (some ports/airports blur "transit" and "entry")
Loose	Visited = you physically crossed the border / set foot in the territory	Gamified counting, border-hoppers, micro-visits	Harder to prove later. Easy to become inconsistent

Our recommendation for serious travelers: use Strict if you care about Schengen 90/180, visas, or tax triggers. Use Standard if you want a map that matches "normal human meaning" of being somewhere.

How DaysAround fits: once you pick a tier, DaysAround becomes the place where you apply it consistently. Your scan shows the raw evidence (photos in a place at a time). Your rule tier decides what gets counted.

Layovers and airports (the #1 visited-map argument)

Most disagreements come from confusing "present in the country" with "entered the country." Your visited countries map stays sane if you separate airside transit from landside entry.

Rulebook for layovers

Use this table and stick to it.

Scenario	Strict rule	Standard rule	Loose rule
Layover, stayed inside terminal (airside only)	Not visited	Not visited	Usually not visited
Layover, left the airport to the city for 2-8 hours	Visited (you entered)	Visited	Visited
Layover, slept in an airside capsule hotel	Not visited	Not visited	Usually not visited
Layover, slept in a landside airport hotel	Visited	Visited	Visited

The defensible line: "Did I clear immigration and enter the territory?" That is a clean yes/no.

How DaysAround helps: your photo scan will often surface airport-area photos (terminal shots, boarding passes, runway photos). In DaysAround, you can review those detections and decide "transit only" vs "entered." That keeps your visited countries map aligned with your rule tier instead of your memory.

A practical time threshold (optional, but useful)

Time thresholds are not universal truth. They are a tool to reduce noise.

If you want one, pick one number and apply it forever:

• 4+ hours landside (good for layovers)
• Overnight (good if you want to avoid counting micro-stops)

If you use a time threshold, DaysAround's timeline-style history makes it easier to apply consistently because photo timestamps show when you were actually there, not when you think you were there.

Cruises, ferries, and riverboats (visited is about disembarking)

Sea travel creates false "visits" because you can be near a country without ever being there.

Rulebook for cruises and ships

Most people use a simple rule that maps well to all three tiers:

• Docked but you stayed onboard: not visited
• Tendered to shore or docked and you disembarked: visited
• Sailed through territorial waters only: not visited

Scenario	What we count as "visited" (recommended)	Why it's defensible
Cruise stop, you never got off	Not visited	No physical presence on land
Cruise stop, you walked around port for 45 minutes	Visited	You were physically in the territory
Ferry crossing, you set foot on shore	Visited	Clear physical presence
Sailing past a coastline	Not visited	No entry, no presence

How DaysAround helps: cruise days are easy to misremember. Photo metadata (a shot on the pier, a cafe receipt photo, a landmark) is strong evidence you disembarked. DaysAround rebuilds those days from photos on-device, then you can confirm the stop counts under your personal rule.

Overland crossings, transits, and border towns

Border regions are where "I was basically there" turns into messy counting.

Train and bus transits through a country

Here's the clean way to handle it:

• If you legally entered (passport control or official entry): count it.
• If you were in sealed transit without entry: do not count it.

Examples:

• Train crosses a border with passport checks: visited (even if you never left the station)
• Bus transit where you clear immigration: visited
• Airside-style transit (rare on land): not visited

DaysAround supports this because it reconstructs presence from photos. If you have even a few geotagged photos from that route, you can verify you were physically inside the country and when.

"I crossed the line for lunch" in a border town

This is where strict vs loose definitions diverge.

• Strict: only count it if you cleared immigration / officially entered
• Standard: count it if you were landside in the country (which usually implies entry anyway)
• Loose: count it if you stepped over the border marker, even briefly

Consistency warning: the looser you go, the harder it is to apply the rule retroactively. Border markers do not create reliable documentation. Photos with location metadata do.

DaysAround helps by showing you what your camera roll can actually prove. If the only evidence is a photo taken on your home side of the border, don't count it. If you have a geotagged photo at a cafe across the line, count it if that matches your policy.

"I drove through without stopping"

This still counts under many rule sets.

• Strict: visited if you entered legally, even if you did not stop
• Standard: visited if you were landside (driving is landside)
• Loose: visited

If you want to avoid counting drive-throughs, use the optional threshold like "2+ hours in-country" or "made a stop." DaysAround's photo evidence can support this, but only if you actually took photos. No photos means you choose to leave it uncounted instead of guessing.

Territories and dependencies (why counts differ between maps)

Your visited countries tracker will disagree with someone else's because you are not counting the same list.

There are two common, defensible frameworks:

Framework 1: Sovereign-state counting (simpler)

What it means: count sovereign countries, roughly aligned with UN member states (about 193, depending on your exceptions).

Pros:

• Your count matches what most people mean by "countries visited."
• Less argument about territories.

Cons:

• You lose geographic detail (Greenland becomes "Denmark," Martinique becomes "France," etc.).

Framework 2: ISO-style country and territory counting (more granular)

What it means: count countries plus territories and special regions, often 240+ codes depending on the scheme.

Pros:

• Better geographic accuracy.
• Better for travelers who deliberately visit territories.

Cons:

• Your count will look "inflated" to people using sovereign-only lists.

How DaysAround helps: DaysAround rebuilds your travel history from photo metadata, then you can align your map to a consistent framework. The important part is not which framework you choose. It's choosing once so your map stays stable across years.

Common territory examples (use a consistent policy)

Pick one policy per line and keep it forever.

Place	Option A (sovereign-only)	Option B (territory-style)
Hong Kong / Macau	Count as China	Count as Hong Kong and Macau separately (dataset-dependent)
Greenland	Count as Denmark	Count as Greenland separately
Faroe Islands	Count as Denmark	Count as Faroe Islands separately
French overseas (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Guiana)	Count as France	Count each territory separately if your list supports it
Puerto Rico / Guam / USVI	Count as United States	Count separately
Aruba / Curaçao / Sint Maarten	Count as Netherlands	Count separately
Gibraltar	Count as United Kingdom	Count separately

DaysAround is practical here because it does not force you to accept a single "official" definition. You can confirm how you want these to appear in your history after the photo scan.

Disputed and partially recognized regions (stay consistent, don't litigate politics)

There is no universal "right" answer for disputed regions on a visited map. The best answer is a policy that you can apply repeatedly.

Here are three policies that stay consistent:

Policy 1: Follow your dataset (lowest effort)

Count places exactly as your map's dataset defines them.

• Pros: simple, repeatable
• Cons: different apps will disagree

Policy 2: Count by de facto control (ground truth)

Count based on who controls the territory in practice.

• Pros: matches travel reality
• Cons: sensitive, changes over time

Policy 3: Count by internationally recognized sovereign state (conservative)

Count disputed regions under the internationally recognized country.

• Pros: stable, conservative
• Cons: loses detail

Examples people search for:

• Palestine, Kosovo, Taiwan, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus

How DaysAround helps: whichever policy you choose, DaysAround helps you apply it consistently across your entire photo-based history. Your raw locations stay the same. Your "counting" stays consistent because you confirm how you classify edge cases.

A one-page "Visited Country Policy Template" (copy and paste)

If you want a map that stays meaningful, write your rules down. Here is a template you can adopt.

My visited-country rules

1. Baseline definition: Strict / Standard / Loose (pick one)
2. Layovers: Airside only does not count. Landside counts.
3. Time threshold (optional): 4+ hours landside / Overnight / None
4. Cruises: Counts only if I disembark and set foot on land.
5. Overflights: Never count.
6. Transits by land: Count only if I legally entered.
7. Territories: Sovereign-only / Territory-style list
8. Disputed regions policy: Dataset / De facto / Internationally recognized

DaysAround is where this template becomes operational. You scan your photos, then apply these rules to confirmations and edits so your map stays consistent across years.

How DaysAround keeps your visited definition consistent across years

The hardest part of a visited countries map is not choosing rules. It's applying them to your real life, retroactively, across dozens of trips.

DaysAround is built for that workflow:

1) Reconstruct your history from photos you already took

Your camera roll already contains timestamps and GPS for most trips.

• Scan runs entirely on-device
• No cloud upload
• No analytics

This matters because you can rebuild years of history without manual logging. Your map starts with evidence, not vibes.

2) Review edge cases (airport-only, cruise days, border moments)

After the scan, the ambiguous situations become visible:

• Airport photos that look like a "visit" but were transit
• A cruise day with no disembark evidence
• A border town lunch where you actually crossed

DaysAround lets you confirm and correct these so your visited countries tracker reflects your rulebook.

3) Keep the same framework (sovereign-only vs territories)

Visited maps vary because their lists vary. DaysAround helps you keep one framework so:

• Your count does not jump around
• Your year-in-review stays comparable
• Your "days per country" stays coherent for tax and visa thinking

The best definition is the one you can defend and repeat

There is no universal authority for what "visited" means. There is only your personal accounting standard.

Pick a baseline tier. Pick a territories framework. Pick a disputed-regions policy. Then apply it consistently.

DaysAround makes this easy because you start from a real record. Your photos already tracked your travel history. DaysAround reads that metadata on-device, helps you confirm the messy edge cases, and keeps your visited countries map consistent year after year.