Announcing new routing, address validation and map customization capabilities

At Google Maps Platform, we strive to continually bring you helpful new capabilities, so you can build innovative geospatial experiences. This includes the latest innovations that people use every day from Google Maps, and additional highly requested platform capabilities. Today, we’re announcing that eco-friendly routing will be available to you in the new Routes API. Eco-friendly routing, already available in the Google Maps consumer app, allows you to choose routes that are optimized for lower fuel consumption. In addition, we’re announcing several features in high demand from developers across the world, including new advanced routing, map customization and address validation capabilities. These new capabilities help you verify addresses for account sign-up and checkout, deliver more informative and flexible routing to drivers, and create highly customized markers, making it easier for you to enhance user experiences and drive operational efficiencies.

Get more informative, flexible and eco-friendly routes 

In the last few years, we’ve worked closely with some of the largest operators in the transportation and logistics industries to help them improve customer experiences and delivery operations at scale via our Mobility services. By popular demand, we’re opening many of these advanced routing capabilities plus eco-friendly routing to all Google Maps Platform developers in the countries where they’re available.

Navigate more sustainably and optimize for fuel savings with eco-friendly routing

In Google Maps, eco-friendly routing helps drivers find the most fuel-efficient routes using insights from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and data from the European Environment Agency. Since launching, it’s estimated to have helped remove more than half a million metric tons of carbon emissions—equivalent to taking 100,000 fuel-based cars off the road. We’re excited to bring eco-friendly routing to you later this year.

This means that you’ll have the option to enable eco-friendly routing in your products and apps, which can help with fuel savings. You can select engine type and enable real-time traffic information to get the most accurate fuel or energy efficiency estimates when choosing an eco-friendly route. For example, delivery companies or ridesharing services can measure fuel consumption and savings for a single trip, multiple trips, or even across their entire fleet to improve their business performance.  

Eco-friendly routing will be available in Preview in the coming months, wherever it’s available on Google Maps. Sign up to receive updates.

Provide more informative and flexible routes with the new Routes API

Today, we’re also announcing the Preview release of the new Routes API, a performance optimized version of the Directions and Distance Matrix APIs, that enables you to provide more informative and flexible routes for your users. 

The new Routes API builds on the foundational features of the Directions and Distance Matrix APIs that your business relies on, like up-to-date directions with real-time traffic, and calculating distances and ETAs for complex matrices of origin and destination combinations. But it also offers new advanced features so you can provide more informative, flexible routes and improved ETA accuracy, including:

2-wheel routes for motorized vehicles

Tolls data for more accurate pricing on how much a route costs

Visualizing real-time traffic along a route

Specifying whether a waypoint is a pass through location or a stopping point 

Fine-tuned controls for reducing latency

Eco-friendly routing (coming later this year)

The new Routes API is available today in Preview. Visit our product blog to learn more about the features and benefits of this new API.

Improve account sign-up, checkout, and delivery with Address Validation

Addresses are necessary to help find people and places, deliver goods, and even open bank accounts. But invalid address data can cost your business time and money. A recent study revealed that the majority of online orders with address typos or misspellings were preventable if an address validator had been in place1. That’s why we’re launching Address Validation–a new API that helps detect invalid address inputs. Address Validation identifies address components, fixes errors, and augments addresses with missing data, which helps prevent canceled orders, customer support tickets, and refunds. It’s powered by the global coverage of Google Maps Platform’s Places data, our breadth of local address knowledge data, and postal data in the United States for extended address coverage. Having Address Validation in place improves user experiences by removing friction at account sign-up or checkout, and saves time and money for your business.

Address Validation will be generally available in select markets in the coming months. Sign up to receive updates.

Make markers your own with Advanced Markers

The ability to easily customize the default red pin directly in your code and create custom markers with SVG and HTML elements ranks among our most requested features from developers. We’re excited to offer this option to you with the Preview release of Advanced Markers for Maps JavaScript API.  

Advanced Markers enables you to easily customize the Google Maps red pin. You can change the color, background, icon and outline of the default pin directly in your code, with no image needed. It supports SVGs directly, allowing you to use your brand logo or other images to create custom markers. And you can create custom markers with HTML elements that respond to user interactions, using the full power of CSS. For example, a real estate business can enable markers to display home prices that respond to user interaction. Advanced Markers are also more performant. They load faster and provide smoother panning and zooming, while supporting fast load times for a larger number of markers.

Like the recent Preview release of Data-driven styling, Advanced Markers is included with Dynamic Maps for Maps JavaScript API as the latest feature added to Cloud-based maps styling. Advanced Markers for JavaScript will be available in Preview in the coming weeks. Sign up to receive updates.

We continue to be inspired by the creative ways you’re using Google Maps Platform to build immersive and transformational geospatial experiences. We’re committed to listening to your feedback to bring you the capabilities you need to deliver exceptional experiences. Sign up to receive updates about these new releases as they become available. We can’t wait to see what you build.

1 Baymard: “Have an address validator”