Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Google Maps adds address search for Australia and New Zealand

Google Maps has added the long awaited address searching for the countries of Australia and New Zealand making the previous released street maps even more useful. When Google released this map data for Australia and New Zealand the maps could only be browsed, but not searched by address. Now this is possible. Local business search and driving directions do not yet appear to be working.

Example (Australia): 5 Lowanna Place Hornsby, New South Wales 2077 Australia

Example (New Zealand): 20 Holly Rd, St Albans, Christchurch, New Zealand

This might also pave the way for Australia and New Zealand geocoding support within the Google Maps API and more mashups from these countries!

Update: Sept.7/06 6:41AM: As expected the folks at Google have announced geocoding support for Australia and New Zealand over on the Google Maps API Blog!

[Thanks to Ed Groenendaal for the tip!]
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:49 PM

    Thanks for the tip! I run a mapping service for travellers and checked last week to see if my addresses in Auckland or Christchurch could be geocoded. Not the case, but this is great... I am now able to use the XML Geocoder API for new addresses being added into Boomtrek. A tip out there for you developers. Best,--James

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  2. Anonymous8:02 PM

    Just confirmed a successful geocoder call for France, so I'm making an honest assumption that Western European addresses are also good to go. ---James

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  3. Unknown9:54 PM

    Thanks for this tip. Shame driving instructions and Google Local won't work yet, but I'm sure people will make use of it quickly in Mashups...

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  4. XxX2:33 AM

    This is really great news, although I notice the postcodes included in the search results for New Zealand are the old ones, not the new ones introduced in June this year.

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  5. Anonymous8:59 PM

    Handy feature, easy to add to existing map mushups. Worth noting that Google address matching alorithm seems to be more precise than that available from MSN's Virtual Earth - see www.aus-emaps.com and run search for the address given as an example...

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