How to Fetch an Address from a Google Maps Short URL Using PHP

10-Aug-2025 Jeyam Templates PHP , Google Map

If you’ve ever worked with Google Maps links in your PHP projects, you might have encountered Google Maps short URLs like https://goo.gl/maps/... or https://maps.app.goo.gl/.... These short links don’t directly give you the full address or location details, which can be frustrating if you need to display or process them programmatically.

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a PHP code snippet that extracts the full address from a Google Maps short link using cURL and DOM parsing. This approach is useful for developers building real estate websites, directory listings, or location-based services.

Why This Matters

Short URLs hide details: You can’t see the address until you open the link.
Automation: Manually opening each link is not feasible for bulk processing.
Data extraction: Useful for displaying location names or addresses dynamically.

PHP Code to Fetch Google Maps Address

Here’s the full working code:

How It Works

Initial cURL request – Opens the short URL without following redirects, so we can capture the redirect target (the full Google Maps link).
Second cURL request – Loads the HTML from the full Google Maps page.
HTML parsing – Uses DOMDocument and DOMXPath to extract meta tag content containing the location name or address.
Output – Displays the fetched location details on your webpage.

Example Use Cases

Real Estate Listings – Automatically display property addresses from stored Google Maps links.
Business Directories – Fetch and show business location names dynamically.
Travel Websites – Convert shared Google Maps short URLs into usable addresses.

SEO Tips for Google Maps Data Extraction

Always cache results to reduce repeated requests to Google.
Avoid excessive automated queries — Google may temporarily block IPs for suspicious traffic.
If possible, use the Google Places API for more structured and reliable data.

Conclusion:

With this simple PHP snippet, you can automatically fetch addresses from Google Maps short URLs, saving time and streamlining your location-based applications. Whether you’re building a local business directory, property management site, or any project requiring address automation, this method is a quick win for developers.