Editing Mercator projection (section)

=== Web Mercator ===
{{Main|Web Mercator projection}}

Many major online street mapping services ([[Bing Maps]], [[Google Maps]], [[Mapbox]], [[MapQuest]], [[OpenStreetMap]], [[Yahoo! Maps]], and others) use a variant of the Mercator projection for their map images<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Battersby |first1=Sarah E. |last2=Finn |first2=Michael P. |last3=Usery |first3=E. Lynn |last4=Yamamoto |first4=Kristina H. |date=June 1, 2014 |title=Implications of Web Mercator and Its Use in Online Mapping |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/carto.49.2.2313 |journal=Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=85–101 |doi=10.3138/carto.49.2.2313 |issn=0317-7173}}</ref> called [[Web Mercator projection|Web Mercator]] or Google Web Mercator. Despite its obvious scale variation at the world level (small scales), the projection is well-suited as an interactive world map that can be zoomed seamlessly to local (large-scale) maps, where there is relatively little distortion due to the variant projection's near-[[conformal map projection|conformality]].

The major online street mapping services' tiling systems display most of the world at the lowest zoom level as a single square image, excluding the polar regions by truncation at latitudes of ''φ''<sub>max</sub>&nbsp;=&nbsp;±85.05113°. (See [[#Truncation and aspect ratio|below]].) Latitude values outside this range are mapped using a different relationship that does not diverge at&nbsp;''φ''&nbsp;=&nbsp;±90°.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}}