Why your Google Takeout export has no coordinates

Takeout is built for account backup, not navigation, here's why that leaves coordinates out, and the direct way around it.

Sample Exports

Free up to 25 waypoints per list. No account needed.

If you've ever exported a Google Maps list through Takeout hoping for a clean file of coordinates, you've probably found the opposite: a JSON or CSV full of place names, sometimes a Plus Code, and no usable latitude/longitude column you can hand to a GPS device.

That's not a bug you're hitting by accident, it's just how Takeout was built. Takeout is designed to back up your account data, not to produce a navigation-ready waypoint file. The place records it exports are meant to be read by Google's own systems, which already know how to resolve a name or a Plus Code back into a location. Your Garmin, your offline hiking app, or your GPX-reading device doesn't have that lookup step, it just needs the number.

So people end up doing one of two things: manually looking up and typing in coordinates for every single pin (fine for 3 places, brutal for 30), or running the export through a third-party geocoder that guesses at coordinates from the place name and sometimes gets it wrong, landing you a few hundred meters from the actual pin, which matters a lot more on a trail than it does in a browser.

MapsLinkQuest skips the export step entirely. Instead of asking Google for a backup file and then trying to reverse-engineer coordinates out of it, MapsLinkQuest reads the actual shared list page, the same page your pins are already rendered on, and pulls the real coordinates directly from it. No Takeout, no geocoding guesswork, no missing lat/long column. Paste your list link, get a GPX or KML file with every pin's real position, ready for Garmin, Gaia GPS, OnX, or any GPX-reading app.

Common questions

Does Google Takeout include GPS coordinates for my saved places?

Not in a directly usable form. Takeout's export is built for account backup, not navigation, so you typically get place names and sometimes a Plus Code rather than a clean latitude/longitude field.

Why does my exported file say "no coordinates found" or show blank lat/long columns?

This happens because Takeout's place records rely on Google's internal systems to resolve a location, which isn't included in the export itself. A converter that reads the raw Takeout file inherits that same gap.

How do I get real coordinates from a Google Maps list without using Takeout?

Skip the Takeout export and use the list's share link directly. MapsLinkQuest reads the shared list page itself, where the coordinates already live, and outputs a ready-to-use GPX or KML file.

Are geocoded coordinates from a place name as accurate as the original pin?

Not always. Geocoding a place name is a best guess and can land you a meaningful distance from where the pin was actually dropped, especially for informal or unnamed locations (a trailhead pullout, a dispersed campsite). Reading the coordinates directly from the list avoids that guesswork.

Also useful

Formats & FAQs

By device & app

Questions? Comments? Love this?

Bugs, use-cases, feature requests, whatever's on your mind, I read every one.