Question

According to various references, Google Maps has a query param called sll which does the following:

Latitude,longitude of the point from which the business search
should be performed. You could use this to perform an off-centre
busness search. Google use it so “link to this page” can record a map
that has had the centre moved after performing a business search. When
requesting a route
map.getBounds().getSouthWest().toUrlValue() returns the
same value maps.google.com uses.

So, for instance, if (43.464258, -80.52041) happens to be in Waterloo, Ontario, and (42.24370, -82.98320) happens to be in Windsor, Ontario (many hundreds of kilometers away), then my interpretation of the above documentation would be that the following query:

https://maps.google.ca/maps?saddr=43.464258,-80.52041&daddr=mcdonalds&sll=42.24370,-82.98320

will do a search for “Mcdonalds” from Waterloo, to some McDonald’s in Windsor.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happens (click for yourself to see!). It ends up doing a search from the saddr point, to the nearest McDonald’s to that point. The value of sll doesn’t factor into it at all.

But here’s where it gets weird! If I omit the sll parameter entirely, then Maps does something completely unexpected: it picks some random McDonald’s in Toronto (a city that is many kilometers away from either Waterloo or Windsor). I need to add some sll parameter (for any value) to make Maps return a result in Waterloo (even though what I’m asking for is a result in Windsor).

Am I misinterpreting all the various sources of documentation about this parameter? Is this a bug on Maps’ end? And, most importantly, is there any working way to do what I’m trying to do, even if it doesn’t involve the sll parameter at all?

Answer 1

I can get it to work with a simple query :

from:43.464258,-80.52041 to:mcdonalds near 42.24370,-82.98320

Which gives the expected result. It won’t work without near which is a keyword.

You can also search from:43.464258,-80.52041 to:mcdonalds, Windsor if you have the city name.

About the sll (and sspn) parameters, it doesn’t work for directions AFAIK. It only works with searches for a single location.