Geohashing Explorer

Learn how to encode the entire world into short strings

Try It Out

Interactive Map

Click anywhere on the map to see its geohash!

Watch the Shrinking Box Animation

See how each character in a geohash narrows down the location on the map above.

Current Geohash:

Neighboring Geohashes

Geohashes that start with the same prefix are nearby. Here are the 8 neighbors of your current geohash:

Precision Levels

The more characters, the more precise the location:

Characters Approx. Area Use Case
1 5,000 km × 5,000 km Continental region
2 1,250 km × 625 km Large country/state
3 156 km × 156 km Metropolitan area
4 39 km × 19.5 km City
5 4.9 km × 4.9 km Neighborhood
6 1.2 km × 609 m Village/District
7 153 m × 153 m Street block
8 38 m × 19 m Building
9 4.8 m × 4.8 m Room
10 1.2 m × 0.6 m Parking spot
11 15 cm × 15 cm Precise GPS location
12 3.7 cm × 1.9 cm Ultra-precise positioning

Real-World Use Cases

Proximity Search

Finding nearby places is easy! All locations starting with 9q8y are in the same ~5km area. Just compare prefixes:

  • 9q8yyk - Coffee shop A
  • 9q8yym - Coffee shop B (nearby!)
  • 9q8z12 - Coffee shop C (different area)

Database Indexing

Instead of complex 2D spatial indexes, just use a regular B-tree index on geohash strings. Query for all records starting with a prefix!

SELECT * FROM places WHERE geohash LIKE '9q8y%'

Gaming

Games like Pokémon GO use geohashing to group nearby players and items efficiently without revealing exact coordinates.

URL Shortening

Instead of lat=37.7749&lng=-122.4194, just use 9q8yyk8yuv8y. Shorter URLs, same precision!

Data Clustering

Group data points by truncating geohashes: 9q8yyk8yuv8y → 9q8y creates automatic geographic clusters.

The Magic Behind Geohashing

The Algorithm:
  1. Start with the whole world: latitude (-90 to 90), longitude (-180 to 180)
  2. Divide longitude in half. Is your point in the left or right half? (bit: 0 or 1)
  3. Divide latitude in half. Top or bottom? (bit: 0 or 1)
  4. Repeat, alternating lon/lat, building a binary string
  5. Convert groups of 5 bits to base32 characters (0-9, a-z minus a,i,l,o)

Example: Encoding (37.7749, -122.4194)

Let's encode San Francisco step by step:

  • Step 1: Longitude -122.4194 in range [-180, 180] → Left half (0) → New range [-180, 0]
  • Step 2: Latitude 37.7749 in range [-90, 90] → Top half (1) → New range [0, 90]
  • Step 3: Continue alternating... builds binary: 01001...
  • Step 4: Convert to base32: 9q8yyk8yuv8y

Why Base32?

Uses characters that are unambiguous: 0123456789bcdefghjkmnpqrstuvwxyz

Excluded: a, i, l, o (to avoid confusion with 0, 1)

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