Tech Tip for Google Earth

You’re probably familiar with Google Maps, and if so you’ve hopefully seen the companion product Google Earth. Both are fantastic, free resources, yet Google Earth is especially powerful because it allows you to evaluate a large number of sites — referred to as geocoding.  Commercial real estate agents use geocoding to evaluate sites from an aerial prospective, yet there’s a myriad of possible uses.  For example, if you’re organizing a party, you could export the invited guests from your email application as an excel or tab delimited file and then geocode the invitation list to determine a center meeting point.

It’s clunky to individually input a large number of sites by hand.  You could pay for a premium edition of Google Earth, or you could try http://www.batchgeocode.com/

Batchgeocode.com will convert spread sheet data into a KML file which Google Earth understands. The process takes minimal work.  All you need to do is convert an excel file with addresses into tab delimited format, open the converted file, and copy and paste the data into the Batchgeocode.com window.

Thanks to Phillip Holmstrand for developing such a neat tool!  The site is free, but if you like it Mr. Holmstrand has included a link to make donations.  He also has a blog that provides some interesting information regarding geocoding.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cheers,
Eric

Posted by Eric Stroud on December 30th, 2008 in Commercial Real Estate

Tags: geocode, geocoding, Google Earth, Google Maps