We’ve been planning to integrate Google Maps with our Philippine Business directory/locator website since it was launched 2 years ago. However, we found the accuracy of the Philippine maps far from perfect, with very obvious descrepancies between the map-view and satellite views. This has changed in the past few months as can be seen by this fantastic street-view of Makati’s Central Business District (check out how even the one-way roads are labelled!).
As such, we’ve finally decided to have Google Map viewer in the company profile pages of PhilippineCompanies.com. The system works by using Googe Maps’ Geocoding facility to determine the Latitude and Longitude of a location using the address information we have in our database. Accuracy is up to street level within Metro Manila and other major cities while the rest of the country would be on the municipal-level. We’re currently working on trying to improve the querying system as well as the way addresses are stored for Philippine Companies so that we can maximize the accuracy as we pass data to Google Maps. This is a daunting task however, with a database fast approaching 50,000 companies. As such, we’ve allowed visitors to edit map locations by pin-pointing the exact business location in the website’s registration page.
With improved Google Map accuracy for the Philippines, we’re very excited in offering possible new Map-related Web Services in the weeks and months to come!