I have a growing index of company names, city and state (Sometimes zip/neighborhood, but specifically never address) that I need to get the lat long pair / address for so I can show them on a map.
Anyone have a suggestion the best api to do this with? (its going to be done ~100k times)
you can easily do it by using the google's location Library.
The complete documentation and tutorial video is at
Google Maps Javascript API at https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/places-autocomplete
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I recently started a google maps API course with Udacity, one of the questions involves geocoding and I have hit a brick wall with it.
the task that I have asked to do is "Using geocode WEB SERVICE request in your browser find the fun place that the following coordinate describes"
the coordinates being LAT:33.1262476 LNG:-117.3115765 the videos on the course didn't go into to much detail.
Any help?
Read about Google's geocoding API, and in particular the reverse lookup of lat/long coordinates -> addresses and/or named locations.
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/intro#reverse-example
For your case, it will be something like making a request to this URL:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?key=YOUR_API_KEY&latlng=33.1262476,-117.3115765
Note that YOUR_API_KEY is something you'll have to create by registering a Google developer account (which is free).
Is it possible to link directly to street view from an URL using only the address (and not lat/lng)?
For example, is there a way to do something like
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=&layer=c&address=Street,number,state&cbp=11,0,0,0,0
Instead of
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=&layer=c&cbll=31.335198,-89.287204&cbp=11,0,0,0,0
?
Lat/lng from geocoding tends to not be recognized by street view as being too far from a street, sometimes getting the wrong street altogether, because the lat/lng it generates may be off the street, as it tries to match the location of a house.
I have looked everywhere and even tried playing with google's URLs on my own, but I can't find anything on it. Most sources won't even mention address. I'm currently using the url sample from this question, but it still isn't really what I'm looking for.
If this is really not possible, could someone link to a source/documentation where it says so?
Edit: Thank you everyone for the answers, but none really address the issue with street view and addresses. I'll look into forwarding this to google. I'll post here if I get a reply.
Let's enhance your code, if you paste the code in browser then you will be redirect to google maps and will show result what you requested.
http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=Space+Needle,Seattle+WA
If you would like to pass the value (address) via php or any other code type then simply it will not work, you cannot use google maps without API to enhance your requirement. Lat & Lng is basic practice to show map and not require any api, but if you would like to pass additional properties then you will have to use google maps api to do so. Detailed documentation can be found here
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/guide
but let's try an example try this code in browser
https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?q=Mumbai,+Maharashtra,+India
You will get an error that api key not found but if you try this one
https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyD4iE2xVSpkLLOXoyqT-RuPwURN3ddScAI&q=Space+Needle,Seattle+WA
Then you will get output. Hope it helps!
First reverse geocode to find the lat lng using another Google Service API.
Then feed the resulting lat lng into the streetview endpoint parameter.
I'm looking for a solution to be able determine landscape type by a given coordinate, for example check if current position is water/forest/town/road and so on. I found google.maps.MapTypeStyleElementType object specification in the Google Maps specification, but not sure if it could help me or not.
Probably, there are some another Maps API with such functioality? Or maybe I should refer to the different types of offline maps?
Nope, the link you send is just for styling the proper features, not to tell which feature is at a given coordinate. If you are interested in landscape, then Corine Land Cover is the thing you are looking for. It describes the types of biotops like forest, water, but also land use - meadow, field, buildings etc. However, I don't know if there is such an online service where you could query particular coordinates. Other solution for you would be to import these GIS layers (they are freely available) to your own gis map server. Maybe this is partially solved as there are e.g. projects how to incorporate these into openstreetmap.
Well not quite, but you could get close to what you're looking for by using the Google Reverse Geocoder and the Google Places API
Google Reverse Geocoding
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/#ReverseGeocoding
If you send the service a geocode it will send back an address type and/or one of several adress components http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/#Types
Google Places API
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/
You could use the Google places API to search for for what's near. If the geocode is in the middle of the lake, the Places API may return something like "Lake Michigan" and then you'd know the terrain obviously.
It is easy to use the Google Maps API to find a specific street address and return the latitude and longitude. For example, link.
However, it appears that typing in the name of a specific location, for example a park, causes problems. Often these don't have a specific street number (at least, not easily findable). Despite the fact that Cadigal Reserve is located at the same address as in the link above, if I enter that as part of the query string and remove the street number, the results become rather useless: link
Typing this directly into maps.google.com easily finds the park itself (and of course, you could then find the latitude/longitude by looking in the URL).
Is there not any way of using the Google Maps API to geocode a park location like this?
It is important to understand that geocoding is not an exact science. The recommended practice if you have addresses that you know should geocode to a specific location is to build a cache and use local (client-side) geocoding.
In version 2 of the api you would build your own client-side cache that contains pre-computed geocoder responses by extending the GeocodeCache. Once a cache is defined, you would call the setCache() method and away you go. This is pretty much explained here:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/services.html#Geocoding_Caching
However, AFAIK GeocodeCache was removed in V3 of the api...
So, I would suggest implementing your own client -side caching-strategy of known addresses and their corresponding coordinates. When your application receives a geocode request for a known address the response would come from your cache (rather than Google's geocoding servers).
Failing all that you can always use a payed geocoding service that, in theory, will have a much more accurate dataset (as well as a higher limit on requests, etc).
Finally, you should also take a look through the Geocoding Strategies document as it gives a good handle on some of the issues here.
When I type in addresses in Google maps for locations in Asia, quite a lot of them are off by more than 200 metres. For example, "blk 85 bedok north road, singapore" is off by more than 300 metres. While I don't expect Google Maps to be spot on every time, sometimes the error is too great for certain use cases. What options do I have to handle inaccurate Google Maps locations in a web app? The web app should let the user enter an address or postal code as part of an entry and I will geocode the address and store the lat-long.
You could use bing, yahoo's and google's Geo Location api's to find latitude and longitude for a location, average the results together and use the result. Thus, if they all agree, you still get a good location, but if they disagree you get the best approximation of all three.
You could even programmatically compare the results from each engine and throw out any that don't agree with the others (for instance, if bing and yahoo agree and google does not, you could throw out google).
Beyond that, if you have a collection of addresses you know to be wrong, you could simply store the correct longitude and latitude for those points, and override the results in those cases.
Of course, to get around this problem at all, you'll need to geocode the addresses, check their validity in some way (as described above), and plot them using their latitude and longitude.
You don't have any fixes for this really, you're at the mercy of the accuracy of google maps here. The important part is you don't know if the address in inaccurate when doing one search to the next, so nothing you can do to handle it.
You can post a topic here and google will see it and often respond as well: Google Maps Local Listing Forums. I'd open something there with some of your examples and hope they get more accurate...that's all you can do in this case.
There are always other alternatives as well, yahoo and bing have mapping APIs, but I have no idea how much better or worse off you'd be going that route.
The problem is not the lat/lng data, in fact, they are correct. The problem is that the geo coords of the map tiles of the public Google maps api are inaccurate. The maps at maps.google.com are provided by a different map provider than the map tiles used with the public Google Maps API that you can embed in your website, use in your own applications, etc.
Check my recent posting at Google Maps & apps with mapview have different current positions
Is the result out on maps.google.com as well as through the maps api?
If on google maps live site the result is accurate then you can do an ajax search to return the correct lon/lat.
I have used this when geocoding UK postcodes
Geocoding UK Postcodes with Google Map API
I tried to reply to the upper answer, but I am not qualified enough yet. Just be aware that whatever you're using for geocoding, sometimes has restrictions on the use of that data. For example, google's geocoding API isn't allowed to be used to display information retrieved anywhere but google maps. The same might be for the others, I don't know what your project is, but it's something to be aware of.