How Do I Find the GPS Coordinates of My Home? GPS Help & Tips

How Do I Find the GPS Coordinates of My Home? GPS Help & Tips
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Introduction

You may want to find the GPS coordinates of your home (or any other address) for a number of reasons such as geotagging (that is attaching location information to files or media such as photographs), or simply because you want to forward that information to someone who can use a GPS navigator to locate this address. There are a number of options that you can use to find the GPS coordinates of your home. Here are a few of them.

How Do I Find the GPS Coordinates of My Home with a GPS Unit?

Be forewarned that a GPS unit is always going to be off by a few meters (up to 5-10) at any location. For most purposes this is fine, but in some cases it may not do and then you are better off going with one of the other methods discussed below. The other thing to remember is that GPS normally does not work very well indoors (low signal or no signal), thus when marking a location using a GPS unit, do it outdoors. Other factors such as tall buildings can also affect GPS reception. So the accuracy can all depends on where you are.

Most GPS units will show the current latitude and longitude at all times, simply note the values that are shown. If not, you may need to tinker around to find out where to get this information from (usually doing something like marking the current location will also do).

How Do I Find the GPS Coordinates of My Home with Google Maps?

There are two ways of doing this. Only the last step differs so follow the rest of the steps as follows:

  1. Type your home address in the Google Maps search.
  2. The address should come up on the left pane as an option with a letter (usually the first one should be the one you desire, A). If you made a mistake, go back and make sure that you have the right address. When you see the correct address, click on the balloon with the letter.
  3. This will bring up a small window with several options (Get Directions, Search Nearby, Zoom here, etc.) inside the map, originating from the point that you selected.
  4. Now there are two options:

Option 1:

Click on the “Link” option on the top right of the Map window (see A figure below). This will bring up a window with two boxes. The first/top box says “Paste link in email or IM” and should look like the following:

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=100+W.+Madison+St.,+Chicago,+IL&sll=41.93271,-87.648733&sspn=0.002985,0.009474. The highlighted part of the above link is your latitude, longitude.

Option 2:

Click on the “Send” option on the small window. This will bring up a window with a message box, which after listing the address will say “Link:

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=100+W.+Madison+St.,+Chicago,+IL&sll=41.93271,-87.648733&sspn=0.002985,0.009474”. The highlighted part of the above link is your latitude and longitude.

GPS Coordinates in Latitude/Longitude Format by Address

If you simply want the GPS coordinates for a given address (including your home) you can use any of the following web-based resources:

https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocode - search latitude and longitude coordinates by address.

https://mapki.com/getLonLat.php - has a nice map interface, but requires centering/zooming map to the desired location.

https://www.melissadata.com/Lookups/addressverify.asp - provides extensive information about the location specified by the address, including GPS coordinates, and businesses located in zip-code+4. Works with US addresses only.

https://www.multimap.com/ – works with addresses in a number of countries including the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It also provides other local information and is worth checking out as a mapping software.