15 years of Google Maps 🌎

In honour of Google Maps celebrating 15 years of mapping the world, they have compiled 15 Google Maps Platform best practices to help you build your projects and businesses.

We've added our words of wisdom to the list and I hope you'll find a few valuable tips and tricks.

1. Secure your API keys 

Restricting your API keys helps ensure your usage of Google Maps Platform is secure. We recommend that you apply restrictions to every key you generate when you generate it. To learn how to restrict an API key, follow this walkthrough or watch this video

2. Set up budget alerts and quotas

To avoid surprises on your next bill, you can create a budget. Creating a budget will not disrupt your API usage and will only alert you when your spend amount exceeds your set limit. You can also set budget alert rules to trigger notifications to stay informed on how your spend is tracking against your budget. For more information on managing your budget, visit this guide.

Another solution to ensure you don’t exceed your budget is to set a quota. Quotas limit the number of requests your project can make per API and can be limited by day, second, and user per second. You can learn more about quotas from this guide or by watching this video

3. Get started with comprehensive documentation 

Google’s documentation is a great place to start and their Frequently Asked Questions section includes answers to the questions we hear most. The site offers in-depth guide and reference documentation for every feature across every Google Maps Platform API and SDK. If you can’t find the answers to your questions or need help, reach out to your contact person and we’ll help you.

4. Tap into community-driven help 

You can tap into community-driven support like the active Google Maps Platform developers community on StackOverflow. It's a great place to ask technical questions about developing, debugging, and maintaining your apps. Our skilled developers have 15 years of Google Maps experience and are always happy to help whenever you need it.

5. Get expert support when you need it

As a customer of a certified Google Maps partner you get two for the price of one support. This means that you’ll get access to both a Google support team and your partner support team for full coverage for all your needs.

We believe it’s easier to describe a problem over the phone than in an email. That’s why our Google Maps teams are always just a phone call away when you need support. Often, we’re able to solve the problem over the phone, so you can go back to focusing on what’s important for your business. Of course, you can also raise a MapsPeople support request. To do so, you just have to fill out this form

You can also create a Google case by visiting the Google Maps Platform Support page in the Google Cloud Platform Console and select the project related to your question in the top dropdown bar. You can expect a 1 hour response time for Severity 1 issues during weekdays and 24 hours for lower severity issues. 

6. Report issues to help yourself and other developers 

The Issue Tracker is where Google actively maintains a list of known and reported Google Maps issues. Here you can view already-reported bugs and feature requests and add your own comments to help their teams investigate issues. Get started by filing a request in the Issue Tracker -- including sample code or a screen capture will help them identify the issue and respond faster.

7. Share your feature ideas to help improve Google Maps Platform 

As you’re working with Google Maps Platform and think up a feature that would make things easier or better, you can add those ideas to the Issue Tracker as well.

8. Add multiple team members to your project

Make sure you add multiple team members to your project and consider using Google Cloud Platform organizations, so that your project can retain the proper set of owners as changes occur in your organization.

9. Sign up for updates from Google Maps Platform

We strive to always give you early notifications on updates and any policy, technical, or general usage changes. You can also get updates about APIs, changes to our terms of service, support portal scheduled maintenance windows, and more by subscribing to Google’s email notification group. Also, in the event Google experiences a service disruption, a banner message will appear in the Maps Support section of the Google Cloud Console, with a link to the issue tracker for more information to give you real-time status on the issue.

10. Dive into expert knowledge

On our website you have access to a range of Google Maps content and we’re constantly adding more. Here you can find blogs about new features and updates, in-depth articles on how your industry can benefit from the different Google Maps APIs, inspiring use cases, tips and tricks, and much more.

11. Follow us on social for tutorials, news, and more

Subscribe to the Google Maps Platform YouTube channel for helpful tutorials, product demos, or users stories. Make sure to also visit our resources page regularly so you don’t miss out on any of our Google Maps webinars, podcasts, or guides. 

12. Use Google Maps Platform’s open-source utility libraries

In addition to the SDKs and APIs, Google also offers a variety of open source utility libraries for JavaScript, Android, iOS, Node.js, and more. These libraries make additional useful features available to you, such as marker clustering and heat maps.

13. Check out GitHub

The Google Maps Platform GitHub org is full of useful open source sample apps and libraries to help you get started and do more.

14. Try out new features

Google Maps is always releasing new features and improving their products to make it easier for you to build. Utilize the latest tools and features to make sure you’re always improving the experience for your users. You can learn more about recent new features here and on our blog.

15. Optimize your implementations 

Our account and support teams help you monitor and optimize your usage to ensure most value for your money. If you want to know more about optimization, Google offers a full list of strategies from improving performance to reducing costs. You can check out Google’s optimization guide here

The summer vacation season has started, but you can always reach out to us if you have questions or need help. We hope these best practices will help you get things done so you can focus on building great experiences for your users. 

If you want to connect with our Customer Success Manager on Google Maps, feel free to reach Fie Hovalt Chistoffersen here.