Add "Search Area" outline onto google maps result

Question

Last year, Google added search area outlines to its offerings as reported in many places, and visible on Google maps itself. For example here, and reported here and here.

To be explicit, this is when google adds an outline relating to the search query. If you were to search for a town, a post code, or a zip code, Google will highlight this region of the map. Example:

This was apparently not available via the API, and only through Google's own web properties.

Recently, I noticed some other domains using this functionality, for example on Twitter.

Is there a seperate API Twitter and other large organisations are using? Has this functionality been added, but is as yet undocumented? Or have I simply missed the announcement and can't find any docs?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9706484/add-search-area-outline-onto-google-maps-result

Answer 1

The outlines you see there come from twitter, they must have stored them.

Take a look at the json-file that is requested when you call the twitter-page: http://api.twitter.com/1/geo/id/c3f37afa9efcf94b.json

I've tried it, geometry.coordinates[0][0] defines a fine polygon(guess the outline for Austin).

When you try it, notice that the order of the pair is lng,lat not lat,lng

So the twitter-geo-API may be a good start for implementing the outlines, fortunately twitter supports JSONP for a clientside solution.

See an example: http://jsfiddle.net/doktormolle/MRYm3/

<edit>

the twitter-API has been changed, the example didn't work anymore(authentication is required)

</edit>