Where Is Toronto, Ontario?

If you are in North America you may be asking where is Toronto, Ontario. Depending whom you ask, the answer can be slightly different. It turns out that asking Google Maps Canada yields a different answer than if you pose the same question via Google Maps API.

We’ve touched on this disparity in a prior post about Google Maps returning inaccurate results. Today we’ll discuss a specific example for Toronto, Ontario.

And if you are wondering — our vote is that Toronto, Ontario is at

43.65320000 , -79.38320000

Where Is Toronto, Ontario? 43.65320000 , -79.38320000

Google Maps API Returning Inaccurate Results

Google does not openly advertise the fact that they have different location data for different users. However there is good anecdotal evidence an hearsay that Google Maps API returning inaccurate results may be by design.

The evidence is most prevalent in the geocoding of locations. The latitude and longitude Google assigns to different addresses is not “set in stone”. It is an interesting anomaly given the fact that places on earth should not move with regard to their latitude & longitude outside of plate tectonics.

The team at Store Locator Plus® has long held a theory that Google intentionally subverts accurate location data; quite likely to gain competitive advantage for their own products and services.

Protecting Google API Keys

protecting google api keys

For those of you in the self-service Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugins camp you are going to want to spend time protecting your Google API Keys.    For those using our Store Locator Plus® managed SaaS service, this is yet another article you can skip.

The basic configuration of Google API Keys tells you to turn off ALL restrictions on the first API key you setup with Google.    Turns out a lot of people have issues with configuring the keys properly and getting them put in the right place. 

To make matters more complicated, some lower-end web hosting companies don’t understand security and in turn shut off critical web services that do nothing to improve security; Like disabling all communication between the web server and Google.  That breaks things like the ability to Geocode locations in Store Locator Plus®.

This article is here to tell our WordPress plugin users how to properly secure their Google API keys for web hosts are configured properly.