Google Maps Reverse Geocoding for Natural Landmarks - google-maps-api-3

Question

On my webapp, I have a page with a Google Map. On the map I want the user to be able to click anywhere in the world, take the lat/long returned by the click event, and using the Google Maps API geocoding service reverse geocode it as is shown here to return whatever information Google has about that location. In the case of towns, streets, and countries; this works very well, but it does not work well for natural landmarks like oceans, rivers, etc. If you try to Reverse Geocode a lat and long in the middle of a lake , it will return information like the what county or state the lake is located in rather than the name of the Lake, which would be more helpful in my situation. To be more explicit, if I give a lat/lng in the middle of Lake Michigan, the reverse geocoding will return: "Mason County, MI, USA" rather than "Lake Michigan". However, if I click on a spot in the middle of Lake Michigan on https://www.google.com/maps, it will create a marker labeled "Lake Michigan".
Is there a google maps api service that I should be using besides the Geocode Service that will return Lake Michigan instead of "Mason County, MI, USA" if I give it a lat/long. Or is there another way I can get "Lake Michigan" returned from a click event without having to pass in a Lat/Long. The Places service seems to make a distinction between "natural" and "political" places (home addresses, business addresses, countries, cities, etc all seem to fall under the category of "political" places). So I am wondering if there are parameters I can pass to the Places Service from a click event that would return Places objects since the Geocode service does not seem to make the distinction between "political" and "natural" places.
Here is the code I have written so far that using the GeoCode Service:
const initMap = () => {
var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('location-map'), {
zoom: 3,
center: {lat: .433014, lng: 0.752724 }
});
var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
map: map,
anchorPoint: new google.maps.Point(0, -29)
});
var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder;
var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow;
function geocodeLatLng(latLng) {
geocoder.geocode({'location': latLng}, function(results, status) {
console.log(results);
if (status === 'OK') {
if (results[0]) {
map.setZoom(10);
var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
position: latLng,
map: map
});
infowindow.setContent(results[0].formatted_address);
infowindow.open(map, marker);
}
}
})
}
map.addListener('click', function(e) {
geocodeLatLng(e.latLng);
});
}

Answer 1

The reverse geocoding ability of the Geocoding API as stated in the documentation:
The process of doing the opposite, translating a location on the map into a human-readable address, is known as reverse geocoding.
So the API not returning an address in the middle of a lake is working as intended. Similarly, the Places API is designed for finding businesses and points of interest, as answered in this bug on Google's Public Issue Tracker.
That said, there is a long-standing feature request to have the functionality added to the Geocoding API, similar to how maps.google.com returns geographic feature names such as "North Atlantic Ocean" when the map is clicked. There's no timeline if/when this will be implemented, but you can star the issue to show more interest in the feature and to receive updates.