Extracting your Google Maps data for Analysis
No Coding Required
If just like me you have been wondering from where you can get the data for your next personal project or the Iron Quest Challenge for analyzing your travel stories. I dug in and found out the ways to extract and format your locations data for various purposes. So, with no further ado, let’s dive straight in and get our data ready.
To begin with we extract our data from Google Takeout which helps us to retrieve data from all google products. Visit the takeout site and select all the check boxes for the apps for which you wish to extract the data, in this case Location History.
Click on the Next Step button to move to the second step in creating your export. Select the required export frequencies for your exports, file type and destination ( The default settings enable you to create one time export zip file of your data). The export zip file is downloaded and a link for the same is sent to you over mail.
The takeout zip file once extracted comprises a folder named Takeout which contains your location history data (monthly as well as overall) in JSON (Java Script Object Notation) format. Now, the next big task at hand is to convert this JSON format to understandable csv or excel (xlsx) format with extracted visited places from the location data. (Obviously without the use of complex coding.)
Note: This extracted JSON format is not compatible with tableau.
Extracting Visited Places while converting from JSON to understandable csv/xlsx format.
The JSON file extracted consists of only the latitude and longitude points and the datetime fields for the location history data. While converting this Json file to a readable format we would also extract the names of locations visited based on the latitude and longitude points using an online Geo processing tool.
When you Run the Tool a window similar to one shown above pops up. Upload Google location history data exported from Google Takeout and add appropriate start and end date to select the period for which you wish to extract the data. If you wish to extract the data to a specific constrained locations by drawing out rectangles specifying area of interest(This step is optional).
Specify the level of accuracy for the data collected- Detailed (includes even short stops only a few minutes long, such as waiting for a public transport), Less Detailed (only visits lasting tens of minutes to several hours) or just a rough estimate of the most important visited places. Less Detailed option works for limiting the size of data.
In the outputs section select the required output format in which you wish to extract your data. Select the Exports source points option to extract from the raw JSON data (in desired format) to a separate file without location name details.
Follow all these steps and Voila we have our data all prepped up, ready to visualise and analyze our travel diaries and much more.
I hope this was helpful. Any queries connect with me on: Twitter(@sakhuja_yash)
Linkedin (Yash Sakhuja)
