I have a data set of locations and would like to allow users to search with advanced things like Search for X near Y.
I have the ability for handling X using all of the meta data about my locations but I don't have the ability to return a result if they type
find X near I35
or
find X near Starbucks
Does anyone know of a way to get this sort of functionality, commercial or free.
Take a look at the Google Fusion Tables SQL API:
http://code.google.com/apis/fusiontables/
This gives you an SQL-like interface for doing both "X has property Y" and "X is near Y"
It also lets you display these results on a Google Map very easily.
Related
I'm setting up Google Analytics for a website where a user can find an event to attend (concerts, plays, etc.). The results can be filtered by 5 different parameters.
So, unfiltered results would look like: example.com/event-finder/
And filtered results showing concerts in January or February would look like: example.com/event-finder?type=concert&month=jan,feb
I'm struggling to figure out the best way to use the query parameters in Google Analytics to analyze filtering behavior.
Example questions I'd want to be able to pull answers for:
What percentage of results were filtered by type?
What percentage of results were also sorted by month?
What is the most common type filtered by?
I have full access to both Google Analytics and Tag Manager but I suspect I shouldn't do this with events or custom dimensions and that there's got to be a way to use the query parameters to do this in a clean way.
I've tried to use a new view and site search to group the types of filters. Seems like it could work, but seems hacky and limited.
I've considered pushing those values into custom dimensions, but that too seems like overkill.
I've considered pulling content reports into Google Sheets and sorting through things there, but I'm 1) not entirely sure how I'd do that and 2) suspect there may be an easier approach.
Let me know if you have any questions or need more clarification. Thanks!
Have you tried to use "category parameters" when configuring site search (admin -> view settings)? You could set the "type" as a category parameter. You can also enter multiple parameters in there.
Check this screenshot of site search configuration
I am trying to use googleAnalyticsR function google_analytics() to retrieve session-level data with 5 dimensions from GA. When I include the "mobileDeviceInfo" dimension in there, the results totally exclude any session that does not have a value for this dimension, namely, any desktop session.
Is there some option in this function to bring in "not set" dimension values as such along with the rest of the fields, instead of filtering them out?
Cheers,
You can try to set the includeEmptyRows option to TRUE (v3, v4). I had a quick look and couldn't find that option in googleAnalyticsR, although it might be there if you search more thoroughly. The alternative is to use a package like get_ga.
I'd like to limit the number of markers that appear on the map in the right hand panel to something like 10 at any zoom level.
How can this be achieved?
The library can and examples can be found here:
http://storelocator.googlecode.com/git/index.html
I am following the code example given here:
http://storelocator.googlecode.com/git/examples/panel.html
There is a code reference here:
http://storelocator.googlecode.com/git/reference.html
But it's still not clear to me exactly how I can customise the example I am following so that it only shows a maximum of 10 markers at any one time.
EDIT : Why I want to do this
I sell a product wholesale to many salons. With this map I am trying to show customers which salons they can go to buy the products I supply.
However in the example given by google, the full list of salons appear as markers on the map. This is not good because it is then possible for competitors to glean an entire list of salons that they can market competing products to.
The solution I'd like would be to only show a maximum of 10 markers at a time according whichever is closest to the inputted address.
For me the example( http://storelocator.googlecode.com/git/examples/panel.html ) always show only up to 10 entries in the panel. There is a hardcoded limit of 10 , so it's not possible to achieve it without modifying the store-locator.min.js
But when you wan't to display less than the 10 entries, it would be possible via CSS:
/* limit the displayed entries to 5 */
.store-list li:nth-child(n+6){display:none}
When you want to apply a higher limit(or when it should be compatible with IE<9) edit this part in store-locator.min.js(line 28)
m=e.min(10,c[E]);
(set the 10 to the desired value)
To limit the number of results at all edit this line in MedicareDataSource.prototype.parse_
for (var i = 1, row; row = rows[i]; i++)
and set it to
for (var i = 1, row; row = rows[i],i<XXX; i++)
(where XXX is the limit +1, so e.g. setting XXX to 11 will apply a limit of 10)
There's a few general approaches, and the better solution depends a bit on your total number of stores you have, and how hard you want to make it for someone to scrape.
You could continue to use the static data feed like in this example (which means sending all stores to the browser on load), and then add some logic to only display the closest 10 (such as setting the map to null for all markers that aren't also shown in the panel), but this is not a good solution if:
there are lots of stores (more than a thousand or so) since it will be unnecessarily slow to load them all when only displaying a few.
you don't want someone to look at your code and just grab the full CSV you're sending down the wire with all your data.
Given your scraping concern, a better method is probably to implement the store locator using a dynamic datasource that only returns the closest N records for a given lat/lng so you don't expose the entire thing at once. Using Google services you could use Maps Engine which has an API, and the store locator includes a Google Maps Engine example you could start with. Your security concern here is if these queries are publicly available for anyone to hit directly, the table is also public and then someone could query for the full table. So you'd want to put a proxy inbetween to avoid that type of query hack (although of course someone could just feed you lots of locations to eventually get all your stores if they really wanted).
Other options (again just looking at Google's stack although there are lots of alternatives for this kind of thing, like CartoDB and many more) include AppEngine's Search API which also returns the N closest items (but would require some server side coding which Maps Engine would not), or even put the data into Google spreadsheets and implement a basic Script -> Web Service, where your script takes the lat/lng and do some basic math to find the closest.
Again if you don't love the server side aspect then Maps Engine is probably your best bet for a quick start especially given there's a working sample in the storelocator code.
I have successfully used Google Places Api and was able to retrieve business establishments (shops) given a latlongbound and a keyword. But I cant stop wondering why it returns lesser shops than when you go to maps.google.com and type the keyword. Google Places does not even return those with a name and icon drawn on the map itself.
I want to retrieve a json with a similar result when typing a keyword on maps.google.com and I don't really mind if Google Places is not used.
Sounds like you may have additional filtering preventing you from querying all the results. Make sure you aren't restricting the 'bounds' or 'region' around your lat/long.
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/
Good luck!
My objective: populate a database with known business places in order to generate maps with those places. I insist on "known places", because my users will only search for the places that are in the database.
I don't want to recreate business places as markers on the map (so latitude and longitude is not enough to id a place), because the places are already available on Google Maps with interesting information (address, comments, ratings, pictures...).
The natural reference is to use the CID and store it in the database.
Now imagine the database is populate with places and their CID, and I want to generate maps with those places as click-able markers. When the user clicks on the marker, she access the business place's page, e.g. http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=998657413562662319. Great!
But how to generate those maps? I don't have the coordinates in the database (assumption). And I cannot use Google Places API (which would give me the coordinates), because it uses a different reference, to retrieve the location of the business so as to generate the maps.
Any ideas?
Thanks a lot!
To clarify: I want to use Google Maps API to generate a map with many business places of which I know the CID. It is comparable to "my maps" in Google. Only that I want to store the places in my database.
Potential solution: For each business in the database, store the name, CID, and coordinates. Write a script that uses Google Places to find businesses at specific coordinates. Loop through the response array (JSON/XML) until the response with the CID corresponding to the searched business is found. Store the Google Places reference into the database. Repeat this script for each newly added business. Cumbersome...
Is this what you are looking for?
http://maps.google.com/maps?cid=998657413562662319
It looks like your best option if you want more than one cid on a map is to use:
http://maps.google.com/maps?cid=998657413562662319&q=a&output=json