The Geocoding API is a service that accepts a place as an address, latitude and longitude coordinates, or Place ID. It converts the address into latitude and longitude coordinates and a Place ID, or converts latitude and longitude coordinates or a Place ID into an address.
The Geocoding API v4 provides both hyperlocal destination and arrival intelligence and core coordinate-to-address resolution. Whether you're building a last-mile delivery, rideshare, or turn-by-turn navigation experience, or normalizing street addresses into coordinates, v4 offers dedicated endpoints tailored to your use case.
Not sure which endpoint fits your application? See Choose a geocoding method.
What you can do with the Geocoding API
Geocoding API v4 includes the following capabilities and endpoints:
- Search for destinations: Retrieve hyperlocal arrival details for a destination from an address, Place ID, or coordinates—including building entrances, routable navigation point tokens, building and grounds outlines, sub-destinations, and nearby landmarks.
- Geocode an address: Convert street addresses into geographic coordinates and Place IDs (forward geocoding).
- Geocode a location: Convert latitude and longitude coordinates into human-readable street addresses or administrative areas (reverse geocoding).
- Geocode a place: Retrieve formatted address details and coordinates for a known Google Maps Place ID.
You can control where the results appear and constrain the results to a particular region, county, or postal code.
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How the Geocoding API works
The Geocoding API v4 supports destination search alongside basic geocoding:
- Destination search (
SearchDestinations): Resolves an address, Place ID, or coordinate pair into a richDestinationobject. Use this method when physical arrival matters—such as identifying preferred building entrances, routing drivers to designated pickup or dropoff points using navigation point tokens, rendering building footprints on a map, or navigating multi-building complexes. - Basic geocoding: Converts between addresses, coordinates, and Place IDs:
- Geocoding: Converts street addresses such as "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" into latitude and longitude coordinates or Place IDs to place map markers or center the map view frame.
- Reverse geocoding: Converts latitude and longitude coordinates or Place IDs into human-readable street addresses for user-dropped map pins, location pickers, or UI display.
- Place geocoding: Retrieves address details and coordinates for a known Google Maps Place ID.
The following table summarizes the resources available through the Geocoding API v4 along with the data each method returns:
| Data resources | Data returned | Return format |
|---|---|---|
| Search for destinations ( POST /v4/geocode/destinations)
|
Returns hyperlocal arrival intelligence: building and grounds polygons (displayPolygon), physical entrances, routable navigationPoints (with tokens), hierarchical containingPlaces and subDestinations, relational landmarks, and primary place details. See Search for destinations.
|
|
| Geocode an address ( GET /v4/geocode/address)
|
Returns address, address components, and address types. See Geocode response. | |
| Geocode a location ( GET /v4/geocode/location)
|
Returns address, address components, and address types. See Reverse geocoding response. | |
| Geocode a place ( GET /v4/geocode/places)
|
Returns address, address components, and address types. See Place geocoding response. |
Launch stage channels
Version 4 of the Geocoding API has separate channels for GA, Preview, and
Experimental features. If you'd like to use Preview or Experimental
features, make sure to specify the correct channel in your request. For example,
to access features of the Destinations endpoint in Experimental, use this HTTP
request: https://geocode.googleapis.com/v4alpha/geocode/destinations.
| Launch stage | Channel name |
|---|---|
| GA | /v4/ |
| Preview | /v4beta/ |
| Experimental | /v4alpha/ |
- See the REST reference for a listing and description of all available REST resources.
- See launch stages for more information about each stage.
Features in Geocoding API v4
Version 4 of the Geocoding API offers these new features.
Destination search method
v4 introduces a Destination search method that lets you retrieve detailed information about various destinations based on different input criteria, such as an address, place ID, or latitude and longitude coordinates. The response includes AI-powered summaries and navigation point tokens that contain contextual information that can be passed to the Navigation SDK for precise routing.
Implemented on the Google Cloud standard platform
Geocoding API v4 is implemented on the service infrastructure on Google Cloud. This implementation brings with it a more secure and trusted platform with enhanced security options like OAuth. This standard API design brings a level of consistency across the APIs that improve the efficiency of development with Geocoding API v4.
OAuth support added
Geocoding API v4 supports the use of OAuth 2.0 for authentication. Google supports common OAuth 2.0 scenarios such as those for a web server.
Field mask support added
Use field masks to specify what information the response should return. For the Geocode an address, Geocode a location, and Place geocoding methods, all fields in the response object are returned by default. For the Search for destinations method, you must specify a field mask in the API request.
API security
The Geocoding API v4 is designed as a server-to-server API. Direct client-side calls from a browser expose API keys to significant risk of theft and misuse, as HTTP referrer restrictions are not sufficient protection for web service endpoints.
We strongly recommend that you call the Geocoding API v4 from your own backend server. For more details on secure implementation patterns and alternatives for client-side needs, see Security considerations.