[GIS] Avoiding Google Maps geocode limit

geocodinggoogle maps

I'm creating a custom google map that has 125 markers plotted via a cms. When loading the map I get this message:

Geocode was not successful for the following reason: OVER_QUERY_LIMIT

I'm pretty sure it's the way in which I've geocoded the markers.

How can I avoid these warnings and is there a more efficient way to geocode the results?

UPDATE: This is my attempt at Casey's answer, I'm just getting a blank page at the moment.

<script type="text/javascript"> 
(function() { 

window.onload = function() { 
 var mc;
// Creating an object literal containing the properties we want to pass to the map 
var options = { 
zoom: 10, 
center: new google.maps.LatLng(52.40, -3.61), 
mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP 
}; 

// Creating the map 
var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map'), options); 

// Creating a LatLngBounds object 
var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(); 

// Creating an array that will contain the addresses 
var places = []; 

// Creating a variable that will hold the InfoWindow object 
var infowindow; 
mc = new MarkerClusterer(map);
<?php
$pages = get_pages(array('child_of' => $post->ID, 'sort_column' => 'menu_order'));
$popup_content = array();
foreach($pages as $post)
    {
    setup_postdata($post);
    $fields = get_fields(); 
    $popup_content[] = '<p>'.$fields->company_name.'</p><img src="'.$fields->company_logo.'" /><br /><br /><a href="'.get_page_link($post->ID).'">View profile</a>';
    $comma = ", ";
    $full_address = "{$fields->address_line_1}{$comma}{$fields->address_line_2}{$comma}{$fields->address_line_3}{$comma}{$fields->post_code}";
    $address[] = $full_address;
    }
wp_reset_query();
echo 'var popup_content = ' . json_encode($popup_content) . ';';
echo 'var address = ' . json_encode($address) . ';';
?>

var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); 

var markers = [];

// Adding a LatLng object for each city  
for (var i = 0; i < address.length; i++) { 
    (function(i) { 
        geocoder.geocode( {'address': address[i]}, function(results, status) {
            if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
                places[i] = results[0].geometry.location;

                // Adding the markers 
                var marker = new google.maps.Marker({position: places[i], map: map});
                markers.push(marker);
                mc.addMarker(marker);

                // Creating the event listener. It now has access to the values of i and marker as they were during its creation
                google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', function() {
                    // Check to see if we already have an InfoWindow
                    if (!infowindow) {
                        infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow();
                    }

                    // Setting the content of the InfoWindow
                    infowindow.setContent(popup_content[i]);

                    // Tying the InfoWindow to the marker 
                    infowindow.open(map, marker);
                });

                // Extending the bounds object with each LatLng 
                bounds.extend(places[i]); 

                // Adjusting the map to new bounding box 
                map.fitBounds(bounds) 
            } else { 
            alert("Geocode was not successful for the following reason: " + status); 
            }

        });

    })(i);

} 
var markerCluster = new MarkerClusterer(map, markers); 
} 
})
(); 
</script>

It doesn't really matter what the solution is as long as the markers load instantly and it's not breaking any terms & conditions.

Best Answer

Like everybody else, I could give you an answer with code, but I don't think somebody has explained to you that you are doing something that is fundamentally wrong.

Why are you hitting this error? Because you are calling geocode every time somebody views your page and you are not caching your results anywhere in the db!

The reason that limit exists is to prevent abuse from Google's resources (whether it is willingly or unwillingly) - which is exactly what you are doing :)

Although google's geocode is fast, if everybody used it like this, it would take their servers down. The reason why Google Fusion Tables exist is to do a lot of the heavy server side lifting for you. The geocoding and tile caching is done on their servers. If you do not want to use that, then you should cache them on your server.

If still, 2500 request a day is too little, then you have to look at Google Maps Premier (paid) license that gives you 100,000 geocoding requests per day for something around 10k a year (that is a lot - with server side caching you should not be reaching this limit unless you are some huge site or are doing heavy data processing). Without server side caching and using your current approach, you would only be able to do 800 pageviews a day!

Once you realize that other providers charge per geocode, you'll understand that you should cache the results in the db. With this approach it would cost you about 10 US cents per page view!

Your question is, can you work around the throttle limit that Google gives you? Sure. Just make a request from different ip addresses. Heck, you could proxy the calls through amazon elastic ips and would always have a new fresh 2500 allotted calls. But of course, besides being illegal (you are effectively circumventing the restriction given to you by the Google Maps terms of service), you would be doing a hack to cover the inherent design flaw you have in your system.

So what is the right way for that use-case? Before you call the google geocode api, send it to your server and query if it is in your cache. If it is not, call the geocode, store it in your cache and return the result.

There are other approaches, but this should get you started in the right direction.

Update: From your comments below, it said you are using PHP, so here is a code sample on how to do it correctly (recommendation from the Google team itself) https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/phpsqlsearch_v3

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