why doesn't Google Maps work on my website?

A very common element in any website is to add Google maps within the page so that users can consult where our office or business is located. This element is very useful because it allows you to easily find the address of a company, especially when it is necessary to know where the physical shop is located.

why is Google Maps beneficial for my website?

This is one of the most used tools when a user wants to travel somewhere, but we also have to see that there are a lot of really useful functions.

1. First of all, there are multiple applications within the platform, it satisfies different needs, so it provides great value within the company to the users who visit it.
2. The attention given to users is continuous, is another of the great benefits of Google Maps, which is always available to users to resolve any type of doubt and solve any emergency that may arise at any time of the day.
3. It also provides users with the best route options, i.e. if a user of your website wants to go to your physical shop, Google will provide the best options to get there.
4. You will not have location problems within your company, that is, before Google Maps, or without Google maps, the option you have to have the address of your shop or company written down as it is, with Google maps, users can be guided to it with a single click, being more likely to reach the site without problems.

since when did this become a problem?

Since last 2016, if you had a map embedded within your website, you will have noticed that it has stopped working. In this post we will explain the reasons why this happens and provide you with several solutions that can help you with the problem.

This is a serious problem due not only to the information problem it generates, making it difficult for users to find the exact location of the company in question, but also because of the loss of credibility it generates around the brand, not having the location of your business operational can mean that users believe that the shop is not operational and therefore decide not to buy. That is why you have to solve this problem as soon as possible.

At the beginning of this, the problem only affected WordPress customers, as others anticipated the problem and did not notice any change on their website.

why is Google Maps not working?

This problem is due to a series of changes that have been made to Google's policies related to the Google maps tool, these Google maps are located within Google's servers, not our website or our server, so the failure is beyond us. And if you want to display this map within your website, you will do it on demand through a Google API. The process for this is as follows:

A user enters a web page that contains a Google map, that web page sends a request to Google via its API, Google then sends the requested map via a web response.

This was completely automatic and worked perfectly until 2016, from this year, Google continued to offer us this information in a completely altruistic and free way, but with a change, now Google demands to know who is using their data and in what way. This forces users to authenticate the use of their API KEY. How do we do this? By generating a unique API KEY for each website from the Google Developers panel and implement it on the websites. This process of obtaining the key is not too complicated and requires only 15 minutes of our time.

how can I solve it?

To get Google Maps working on your website, one of the easiest ways to do it is to use a widget from which we will insert the Google Maps API. There are many different Google Maps widgets that have been created by developers. After this, you will have a working map on your website where users will be able to locate you more easily.

There are different ways to solve this problem, the simplest would be to use a plugin developed for this function, although there are different ways to insert the API by code or as an extension of the map URL.

After this we reach June 2018, where Google is only being altruistic by half, it no longer works with the solution discussed in the previous paragraph, if you are a website and you decide to use Google Maps within it, you must enter your credit card details, but, for the moment, Google gives us 200€ of monthly credit so that this operation does not cost us money.

In conclusion, if you want your website to continue showing the Google Maps map, what you will have to do is create a Google Maps Developer account, where you will have to enter your credit card details and provide the developer with the new API KEY, which is what will introduce the map on your website.

beware, there's a catch

Google has decided to give away 200€ of credit per month to the different websites so that they can continue using the Google Maps service completely free of charge, but what is not yet clear is whether they are going to stop giving away this 200€ without prior warning from one day to the next or what will happen if you exceed the free limit on your website, as you have already entered your credit card and this could mean that we get a bill that is too big for our account.

What Google wants with all this is to limit all those websites that were making too much abusive use of the free Google maps systems, such as mobility apps or real estate.