Google recently announced that they’re making some changes to the way they handle their map usage for websites. These changes will be rolled out next month on the 11th June, but how could they affect you?

They’re introducing Google Maps Platform, what they’ve dubbed as the ‘next generation of Google Maps business.’ This new platform will streamline APIs into just three products – Maps, Routes and Places – making it a lot simpler to manage, find and add new features to websites.

However, they’re also changing the way their pricing plan works – which is where this could impact you and your website.

What is the new pricing plan?

Instead of Standard and Premium accounts, there will now just be one pay as you go pricing plan for all users. Google will be crediting everyone’s account with a free monthly usage amount of $200 (roughly £147 at the current exchange rate).

A lot of websites are likely to stay within this free amount, but anyone who goes over $200 will be charged per usage. You can read more about this on Google’s blog.

Will I go over the free $200 usage?

If Google maps is used a lot throughout your website, then it’s possible you could end up using more than the allocated $200.

For example, estate agent sites typically tend to pull information from Google maps whenever a user searches for a single property. With multiple users potentially searching for a number of different properties per visit to the site, the usage amount could easily rack up.

Of course, it does all depend on the amount of monthly traffic each website gets. This is something we’ll be taking into consideration when reviewing all of our clients who use Google maps, and over the next couple of weeks we’ll be sending out emails with some advice and possible next steps that need to be actioned.

We’ll be in touch very shortly, but in the meantime feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.