Abstract: Ranking is a popular and universal approach to sort items based on the value of its attributes,which can make judicious and informed decisions effectively.This paper reviews the related research on the visual analysis for data ranking.Firstly,the design and application of visual elements such as coordinate axis location,length,angle,area and brightness/saturation from the perspective of visual element mapping is introduced.Secondly,with different structural forms of data for ranking,an overview of the advanced technologies and methods with respect to multidimensional,temporal,spatial and topological features is proposed.Furthermore,applications of ranking visual analysis in the human economy,urban traffic,culture,sports and entertainment are investigated.Finally,the challenges and future developments of ranking visualization are prospected.