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The term geocoding generally refers to translating a human-readable address into a location on a map. The process of doing the opposite, translating a location on the map into a human-readable address, is known as reverse geocoding.
Reverse geocoding requests Required parameterslatlng — The latitude and longitude coordinates specifying the location for which you want the closest, human-readable address.key — Your application's API key. This key identifies your application for purposes of quota management. Learn how to get a key.These are the optional parameters that you can include in a reverse geocoding request:
language — The language in which to return results.
language is not supplied, the geocoder attempts to use the preferred language as specified in the Accept-Language header, or the native language of the domain from which the request is sent.region — The region code, specified as a ccTLD ("top-level domain") two-character value. The parameter can also affect results based on applicable law.result_type — A filter of one or more address types, separated by a pipe (|). If the parameter contains multiple address types, the API returns all addresses that match any of the types. A note about processing: The result_type parameter does not restrict the search to the specified address type(s). Rather, the result_type acts as a post-search filter: the API fetches all results for the specified latlng, then discards those results that do not match the specified address type(s).The following values are supported: Address types and address component types
The types array in the GeocodeResult body in the response indicates the address type. Examples of address types include a street address, a country, or a political entity. The types array in the AddressComponents field of the GeocodeResult body indicates the type of each part of the address. Examples include street number or country.
Addresses may have multiple types. The types may be considered 'tags'. For example, many cities are tagged with the political and locality types.
The following types are supported and returned in both the address type and address component type arrays:
Address Type Descriptionstreet_address A precise street address. route A named route (such as "US 101"). intersection A major intersection, usually of two major roads. political A political entity. Usually, this type indicates a polygon of some civil administration. country The national political entity, and is typically the highest order type returned by the Geocoder. administrative_area_level_1 A first-order civil entity below the country level. Within the United States, these administrative levels are states. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. In most cases, administrative_area_level_1 short names will closely match ISO 3166-2 subdivisions and other widely circulated lists; however this is not guaranteed as our geocoding results are based on a variety of signals and location data. administrative_area_level_2 A second-order civil entity below the country level. Within the United States, these administrative levels are counties. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. administrative_area_level_3 A third-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. administrative_area_level_4 A fourth-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. administrative_area_level_5 A fifth-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. administrative_area_level_6 A sixth-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. administrative_area_level_7 A seventh-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels. colloquial_area A commonly-used alternative name for the entity. locality An incorporated city or town political entity. sublocality A first-order civil entity below a locality. For some locations may receive one of the additional types: sublocality_level_1 to sublocality_level_5. Each sublocality level is a civil entity. Larger numbers indicate a smaller geographic area. neighborhood A named neighborhood. premise A named location, usually a building or collection of buildings with a common name. subpremise An addressable entity below the premise level, such as an apartment, unit, or suite. plus_code An encoded location reference, derived from latitude and longitude. Plus codes can be used as a replacement for street addresses in places where they do not exist (where buildings are not numbered or streets are not named). See https://plus.codes for details. postal_code A postal code as used to address postal mail within the country. natural_feature A prominent natural feature. airport An airport. park A named park. point_of_interest A named point of interest. Typically, these "POI"s are prominent local entities that don't easily fit in another category, such as "Empire State Building" or "Eiffel Tower".
An empty list of types indicates there are no known types for the particular address component (for example, Lieu-dit in France).
location_type — A filter of one or more location types, separated by a pipe (|). If the parameter contains multiple location types, the API returns all addresses that match any of the types. A note about processing: The location_type parameter does not restrict the search to the specified location types. Rather, the location_type acts as a post-search filter: the API fetches all results for the specified latlng, then discards those results that do not match the specified location types. The following values are supported:
"ROOFTOP" returns only the addresses for which Google has location information accurate down to street address precision."RANGE_INTERPOLATED" returns only the addresses that reflect an approximation (usually on a road) interpolated between two precise points (such as intersections). An interpolated range generally indicates that rooftop geocodes are unavailable for a street address."GEOMETRIC_CENTER" returns only geometric centers of a location such as a polyline (for example, a street) or polygon (region)."APPROXIMATE" returns only the addresses that are characterized as approximate.extra_computations — Use this parameter to specify the following additional features in the response:
ADDRESS_DESCRIPTORS — See address descriptors for more details.BUILDING_AND_ENTRANCES — See entrances and building outlines for more details.extra_computations parameter in the request for each feature, for example:
extra_computations=ADDRESS_DESCRIPTORS&extra_computations=BUILDING_AND_ENTRANCES
If both result_type and location_type filters are present then the API returns only those results that match both the result_type and the location_type values. If none of the filter values are acceptable, the API returns ZERO_RESULTS.
The following query contains the latitude/longitude value for a location in Brooklyn:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=40.714224,-73.961452&key=YOUR_API_KEY
latlng parameter.
The above query returns the following result:
{
"results" : [
{
"address_components" : [
{
"long_name" : "277",
"short_name" : "277",
"types" : [ "street_number" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "Bedford Avenue",
"short_name" : "Bedford Ave",
"types" : [ "route" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "Williamsburg",
"short_name" : "Williamsburg",
"types" : [ "neighborhood", "political" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "Brooklyn",
"short_name" : "Brooklyn",
"types" : [ "sublocality", "political" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "Kings",
"short_name" : "Kings",
"types" : [ "administrative_area_level_2", "political" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "New York",
"short_name" : "NY",
"types" : [ "administrative_area_level_1", "political" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "United States",
"short_name" : "US",
"types" : [ "country", "political" ]
},
{
"long_name" : "11211",
"short_name" : "11211",
"types" : [ "postal_code" ]
}
],
"formatted_address" : "277 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
"geometry" : {
"location" : {
"lat" : 40.714232,
"lng" : -73.9612889
},
"location_type" : "ROOFTOP",
"viewport" : {
"northeast" : {
"lat" : 40.7155809802915,
"lng" : -73.9599399197085
},
"southwest" : {
"lat" : 40.7128830197085,
"lng" : -73.96263788029151
}
}
},
"place_id" : "ChIJd8BlQ2BZwokRAFUEcm_qrcA",
"types" : [ "street_address" ]
},
... Additional <code>results[]</code> ...
Note that the reverse geocoder returned more than one result. The "formatted_address" results are not just postal addresses, but any way to geographically name a location. For example, when geocoding a point in the city of Chicago, the geocoded point may be denoted as a street address, as the city (Chicago), as its state (Illinois) or as a country (The United States). All are "addresses" to the geocoder. The reverse geocoder returns any of these types as valid results.
The reverse geocoder matches political entities (countries, provinces, cities and neighborhoods), street addresses, and postal codes.
The full list of formatted_address values returned by the previous query is shown below.
{
"plus_code" : {
"compound_code" : "P27Q+MCM New York, NY, USA",
"global_code" : "87G8P27Q+MCM"
},
"results" : [
{
"formatted_address" : "277 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
...
"types" : [ "street_address" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "279 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
...
"types" : [ "premise" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "277 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
...
"types" : [ "establishment", "point_of_interest" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "291-275 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
...
"types" : [ "route" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "P27Q+MC New York, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "plus_code" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "neighborhood", "political" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA",
...
"types" : [ "postal_code" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "neighborhood", "political" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "Kings County, Brooklyn, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "administrative_area_level_2", "political" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "Brooklyn, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "political", "sublocality", "sublocality_level_1" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "New York, NY, USA",
...
"types" : [ "locality", "political" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "New York, USA",
...
"types" : [ "administrative_area_level_1", "political" ]
},
{
"formatted_address" : "United States",
...
"types" : [ "country", "political" ]
}
],
"status" : "OK"
}
This API returns different types of addresses, from the most specific street address to less specific political entities such as neighborhoods, cities, counties, and states. The more exact address is generally most prominent result, as it is in this case. If you want to match a specific type of address, see the section below on restricting results by type. Because of this, the location of the results relative to each other can vary.
Note: Reverse geocoding is an estimate. The geocoder tries to find the closest addressable location within a certain tolerance. If the geocoder doesn't find a match, it returns zero results. Reverse geocoding filtered by typeThe following example filters the addresses returned to include only those with a location type of ROOFTOP and an address type of street_address.
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=40.714224,-73.961452
&location_type=ROOFTOP&result_type=street_address&key=YOUR_API_KEY
Note: These filters are only valid for reverse geocoding.
Reverse geocoding responsesThe format of the reverse geocoding response is the same as the Geocoding response. See Geocoding responses. Below are the status codes possible in a reverse geocoding response.
Reverse geocoding status codesThe "status" field within the Geocoding response object contains the status of the request, and may contain debugging information to help you track down why reverse geocoding is not working. The "status" field may contain the following values:
"OK" indicates that no errors occurred and at least one address was returned."ZERO_RESULTS" indicates that the reverse geocoding was successful but returned no results. This may occur if the geocoder was passed a latlng in a remote location."OVER_QUERY_LIMIT" indicates that you are over your quota."REQUEST_DENIED" indicates that the request was denied. Possibly because the request includes a result_type or location_type parameter but does not include an API key."INVALID_REQUEST" generally indicates one of the following:
address, components or latlng) is missing.result_type or location_type was given."UNKNOWN_ERROR" indicates that the request could not be processed due to a server error. The request may succeed if you try again.The plus_code field within the Geocoding response contains a plus code that best approximates the queried latitude and longitude. In addition, the JSON results array in most cases contains a full Geocoding result with a plus_code type and an address containing a plus code. The distance between the decoded plus code and the request point is guaranteed to be under 10 meters.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-07-02 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-07-02 UTC."],[[["Reverse geocoding transforms geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) into a human-readable address using the `latlng` parameter."],["The response provides a list of potential addresses, each with details like formatted address, address components, geometry, place ID, and types."],["Filtering options like `result_type` and `location_type` refine results based on address and location preferences."],["While aiming for accuracy, reverse geocoding is an estimation, and results may vary in precision or return `ZERO_RESULTS` if no match is found."],["Understanding status codes like `OK`, `ZERO_RESULTS`, and potential errors helps interpret the API's response effectively."]]],[]]
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