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What good will maps be, if they were not drawn to scale?
Well, they would have no meaning and they wouldn’t help much with respect to getting the correct picture of distances, imaging or even sizes of water bodies and lands as well.
Scales aside, there is also another aspect that is very important in the world of mapping and for sure, it cannot be ignored by any chance. This aspect is where maps are drawn along with their correct latitudes and longitudes. With these figures, it is very easy to properly read a map and in return you’ll get the best and most correct results as far as the location of a place is concerned. In mapping or geographical terms, these readings are referred to as coordinates.
The big question here is that are these readings really that necessary when it comes to Google Maps mapping services? Well, the solid answer here is, yes, they are. If you don’t have the correct coordinates, your phone or tablet would not be able to locate any place. This is especially true because Google Maps functions as a GPS in itself. It’s not just about the map; it’s about the transmission of radio pulses that the GPS constantly emits. Google has four GPS satellites in the sky that keep picking up these signals and any device is able to connect to at least three of these satellites at a given time, regardless of its global position.
It takes a very short time for the satellite to receive these signals and reflect them back to the device and what the maps displays in the end is the exact ground location of the device. This location is given out in the form of coordinates. When using a PC, you can see your location represented as an illustration on the map.
How to search for any location using coordinates
To search for any location on Google Maps using coordinates is a very simple task that will give you the most accurate results. However, you must first of all know the coordinates of the location you are looking for, otherwise, you’ll have to take a longer route to get the best results. However, our team has taken care of this part as well. Just keep reading.
- Go to Google Maps on your PC via the page http://maps.google.com
- Run the usual search for the location you are looking for
- A successful search will yield a marked result on the screen. Right click on this marking.
- Select “What’s here” and you’ll be directed to a new box just below the search box. Here you’ll see the picture of the location, its address and the coordinates of this place.
- Copy and paste these coordinates in the search box and go ahead and run a search.
- You’ll get the initial search results, but this time with the coordinates marked on the Google Maps.
Coordinate formats for running Google Maps searches
As noted earlier, coordinates are made of latitudes and longitudes. This means that when keying in the search parameters in the search box, you need to have all these values in the phrase.
There are three known formats of doing this. One format of entering the coordinates is using Decimal Degrees (DD), Degrees and Decimal Minutes (DMM) and thirdly, Degrees, Minutes and Seconds (DMS). All formats will give you the same results.
The good thing with Google Maps is that it is available on mobile platforms as well and as such, the users of Android devices can use the same parameters and formats to carry out Google Maps searches.
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