Editor’s note: Today’s post is a Q&A with Jonathan Wagner, CEO of Scribble Maps. In this post he shares how Scribble Maps is using Google Maps Platform and most recently the Places Aggregate API to launch ScribbleSight to help users create custom scores for virtually anything, from vacation planning to retail site selection.
Q: Tell us about Scribble Maps. How long have you been around, who are your customers, and what makes you unique?Scribble Maps has been around since 2009 helping people create, analyze, and share maps. We are a horizontal mapping company, meaning our tools serve a wide range of industries instead of just one vertical. Our customers include construction, real estate, site analysis, agriculture, logistics, and more. As the name implies, our core is map annotation but we have increased our offerings substantially over the years to include spatial analysis. We are a product led company that focuses on usability and innovation and offer some unique tools, some of which are patent pending, that you can’t find anywhere else. In addition, we developed our own editing and rendering engine in house for annotations.
Q: Are there specific Google Maps Platform products or APIs that you currently use and how long have you been using them?We’ve been a Google Maps Platform customer since day one in 2009. We use base maps, 3D Tiles, Air Quality API, Pollen API, Geocoding, Routes, Place Search, Street View, Distance Matrix, and now the Places Aggregate API.
A view of a satellite image report in ScribbleSight
Q: Are there other Google products that you’ve incorporated into the Scribble Maps?Google Sheets API, which allows live-updating maps from spreadsheets and Google Drive for saving and loading spatial files. We also utilize Gemini to allow users to create custom styles and palettes from text in addition to doing some initial response ticket work.
Q: Tell us about the launch of ScribbleSightTM. What kind of decisions are you hoping to unlock for your customers and users with the launch?ScribbleSight lets users create custom scores for virtually anything, from vacation planning to retail site selection. A key innovation is the ability to factor in what you don’t want as well as what you do. For example, scoring areas positively for restaurants but negatively for pollution levels. It allows you to score on things outside of just place types such as tree counts, pollution, pollen, and foot traffic activity (coming soon).
Q: Why did you choose the Google Maps Platform Places Aggregate API to bring these capabilities to life?
Google has the best place databases in the world and in addition it has one of the most thorough reviews, as well. It’s one thing to know if an area has a lot of restaurants but what if you want to know where the bad operators are in addition to raw counts? The Places Aggregate API uniquely enables these kinds of insights.
Finding the perfect location for you with ScribbleSight
Q: How has the Places Aggregate API allowed you to create a better experience for your users?
The granularity of types in addition to other data such as reviews, price, etc. allow the user to really create the exact score they want. It’s no longer just about the quantity of places but also things like price and rating in addition to other factors like pollution, pollen, and foot traffic. The granularity of place types, reviews, and price data are critical to our product.
Q: Tell us about the technical effort?
Figuring out the UI and how AI can play with it was probably the most challenging and rewarding part of ScribbleSight but the integration of the Places Aggregate API was the easiest part.
A view of a heat map report in ScribbleSight
Q: Are there any future features or integrations you are considering for ScribbleSight, perhaps with other Google products? What's next?
With ScribbleSight, one of the most exciting things on the horizon is our work with an opt-in mobility partner. Together, we’re building an area foot traffic index that will let users see aggregate motion patterns throughout the day. What’s really exciting about this is we are going to be making it available at a price point in the hundreds of dollars rather than thousands. ScribbleSight can already give small business cafe owners insights into their new franchise location but this new feature will really open up something to them that was really limited to bigger players before.Beyond ScribbleSight, the future for us is AI. We are working to implement the various Google foundational models into ScribbleSight.We have also been working on some other really great stuff that right now with Gemini that we haven’t anywhere else on the market yet, but that will be for another blog post.
Q: Do you have any advice for other development teams creating GIS and location-based experiences and platforms?
The future is not GIS, the future is insights and answers. The world is getting flooded with generic solutions so you need an edge and you need to build more than just a tool.
