Unlock the Power of Location Data: How Google Maps Platform Can Boost Your Business
Google Maps Platform (GMP) helps businesses and customers find each other.
Connecting buyers and sellers is a centuries old problem and anyone who has used Google Maps, the world’s most popular navigation application, knows how powerful this application is in finding people and places. GMP makes this technology available through Google Cloud via APIs and SDKs. As of this publish date, there are over 30 APIs organized into 4 product categories:
- Maps
- Routes
- Places
- Environment.
How can Google Maps Platform boost your business?
4 Google Maps Platform Product Categories
Maps
When you open Google Maps, you see a map.
The Google Maps API allows you to embed a map with your location so customers can find you. For example, Staples uses this API to help customers locate a nearby store out of their 1600 stores in North America. You can even add satellite view, street view, aerial view to enrich your map.
Google Maps has over 60 million kilometers of roads in 250 countries and territories and is updated regularly so customers can find you in many parts of the world.
Routes
When you open Google Maps, you can ask it for directions.
The Routes API finds the best path between two points. While you might think this helps customers find you, the power of this API is helping you find your customers. Dominos Pizza takes the guesswork out of delivering pizzas using routes.
Google Maps provides over 20 billion km of directions every day so you can use GMP to find the fastest, cheapest (ie. no tolls), and eco-friendly path to your customers.
Places
When you open Google Maps, you can search for a business or a point of interest.
The Places API returns information from the over 200M businesses and points of interest in Google Maps. IKEA Germany uses this API to embed information such as addresses, operating hours, and store services. The power of this API is enabling businesses and customers to learn about each other before connecting.
Google’s community of 60 million local guides make more than 20 million contribution per day in an effort to provide accurate and reliable information.
Environment
The Environment APIs are unique to Google Maps Platform since there is currently no equivalent in Google Maps.
There are 3 environment APIs that have nothing to do with connecting businesses and customers but they serve other purposes. The Solar API helps accelerate solar installation and comes from Google’s Project Sunroof. The Air Quality API fetches air quality data for specific locations. The Pollen API fetches pollen information for specific locations.
Businesses can use the environment APIs to estimate solar potential, understand climate and environmental changes, and hit sustainability goals.
Google Maps Platform Pays For Itself
Google Maps Platform is just pennies (or less than pennies) per API call.
How much could you increase sales if GMP helped customers find you? How much could you decrease costs if GMP optimized your travel and saved fuel? How could GMP help you achieve your sustainability goals? By understanding these financial impacts, GMP could pay for itself.
Google provides $200 of free usage every month and provides a pricing calculator so you can experiment and estimate your return on investment.
One More Popular Use Case — Address Validation
Before providing directions, you need valid addresses.
The Address Validation and Autocomplete API validates addresses against Google’s massive dataset. You might have noticed this API on some e-commerce sites you’ve purchased from, which validates customer addresses before saving them into a customer relationship management (CRM) database. A not so well known potent use case is to use this API to clean existing addresses in your CRM. What if the Address Validation API prevents one “return to sender because it could not be delivered as addressed”? How much savings would that generate?
Bad CRM data can lead to missed opportunities so the Address Validation API can easily fix this problem.
Summary
Google Maps Platform is a hidden gem in the Google Cloud Portfolio.
It consists of Maps, Routes, Places, and Environment APIs that help businesses and customers connect. The use cases are plentiful and easy to understand since many people are familiar with Google Maps. There are measurable benefits that can pay for your GMP investment. This blog post provides a small sample of use cases and there is so much more that Google Maps can do.
Try Google Maps Platform in the Google Cloud Console and reach out to your Google Cloud Account team for more information.
Resources
- Google Maps Platform Website
- Google Maps Platform Documentation
- Google Maps Platform FAQ
- Routes API
- Google Maps Sustainability APIs
- Google Maps Pricing Calculator
- Address Validation API Demo
- Introducing Environment APIs Blog Post
- Google Maps Platform Customer Stories
