Hi, This is my first ever post on DPF, and please forgive me for it being such a long one! I have a question in relation to the legalities of using the Google Maps API on a vertical website for listing businesses, and wonder if anyone here has any experience in this matter, as it seems to be a slightly grey area from my research. The site I am working on is currently not live and in development and focuses on a niche subject matter, and will include a 100+ pages of on-topic rich content ready for launch. I will be hoping to use AdSense on the site (pending approval after launch, though I do already have an account). One additional aspect I'm also looking at including to enhance the website and potentially generate some further income are business listings for the particular niche that the site revolves around. Yes, a directory, though I wouldn't term the site as a whole as a directory website, as the directory will be just one aspect of the site to complement the content I'm creating elsewhere on the site and give it some added value by helping to partner up the people reading up on the subject I'm writing about with businesses listed on the site. I am currently populating 'free' business listings on the site (without the aid of any scraping software of any kind, just my own research from the businesses own websites). As with any directory, businesses will be able to upgrade their listing to an enhanced / featured listing for extra prominence at an additional cost. I'm in the early stages of development in the listings section, but I pretty much have things looking / working as I would like them to. My question ('Finally!', I hear you cry!) relates to the legalities of using the Google Maps API to display the location of the business on a map on the listing page, as well as include a map on any results page with multiple markers added to the map for each of the businesses that appear in the results. I have a system in place for this that makes use of my own data I have acquired for each of the businesses being listed (researched from their own websites and just basic postal address / telephone / fax / website address), and just to be clear I am not using any data from listings on Google Places / Maps, other than the map itself, and the latitude / longitude of the business which I acquire through performing a search on Google Maps. The obvious answer may be, "Yes of course it is ok, you must have seen a multitude of sites that do something of a similar nature" - which I have indeed as I'm sure most of us have stumbled upon many sites of this nature. That alone doesn't prove it's legally acceptable to do so, as it's possible some of them may have special dispensation from Google to do so, or perhaps they are doing so without being aware of any legal ramifications. The Google Maps API terms and conditions states this... https://developers.google.com/maps/terms From that, at first glance I read... "No Business, Residential, or Telephone Listings Services." which immediately puts a dampener on progressing with this project. However it then goes on to say... "You must not display any of the business listings Content provided by the Maps API(s) in any Maps API Implementation that has the primary purpose of making available business, residential address, or telephone directory listings." which then makes me think that it is just saying do not use business listings Content from the API itself (i.e. any of the business details listed on Google Maps / Google Places), which I am not doing, like I say, I have researched and acquired the data for the listings myself (with the exception of the latitude / longitude of the business which comes from a Google Maps query on the address of the business). So the only thing I am facilitating is the use of the Google Map itself. To confuse matters more, a quote from Thor Mitchell (Google Maps API Product Manager) on the following developer blog post... http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_01_archive.html states... ...which sounds to me like he is saying that what I am doing is fine with Google, as long as I don't use the data provided by the Google Maps / Places API for any of the business listings detail, I am still ok to use the map. I have read a few older posts elsewhere on the interweb that say it would be against the Google Maps T&C stated above, but from what I'm reading in the T&C and from Thor Mitchells comments above it seems like it might be alright, and it's easy to find many websites who are doing such a thing, many of which are also emblazoned with AdSense meaning that in all probability someone at Google has seen and approved what they are doing. I just don't want to spend several months building this only to find I have to remove all the maps related content and certainly not do anything to displease the big G. So, does anyone have any experience of this or is knowledgeable when it comes to legalities / t&c's. Would definitely be interested to hear what other people make of this. Many thanks in advance for any feedback or help anyone can provide.
It sounds to me like what you are planning on doing is okay. I think, in layman's terms, what they are trying to stop is people ripping all the data from the API and putting that ripped data in a listing or directory. If you are getting your directory listing information from other sources and then using the API to show a map of the various businesses in your directory - it sounds to me like that is an authorized and approved use of the API. Good luck with your niche business directory.
The T&C as with many I suppose, is typically ambiguous, but that's pretty much how I have read things too, a preventative measure against scraping business details / info from the Google Maps / Google Places API, be it automated or otherwise, which I have no interest in. I think I can crack on with it now as the small doubts I had are beginning to fade. Plus if the absolute worse comes to the worse, I've read there are apparently a handful of other map providers with their own API's that I could facilitate to do a similar thing. Thanks very much for the helpful reply and good wishes!