Search & directions

How customers find stores on the public map and tap through for directions.

The two things customers do most on a public map are search for a store and tap for directions. Both work out of the box — but how well they work depends on how you configured your data.

The search box lives in the list panel beside the map. Customers type a keyword, and both the list and the map narrow to the matches.

Search only covers the fields you display

The system only searches the fields you configured to appear in the customer-facing list. A field that is not displayed cannot be searched on.

That is deliberate: if hidden fields were searched too, a customer would type a word and get back a store showing that word nowhere — which reads as a broken search. If you want customers to find stores by some piece of information, put that field into the displayed list — see Publishing & sharing.

Turning off the list panel removes the search box too

The search box sits inside the list panel. An embed with sidebar=false leaves nowhere to type, and the Demand analysis report goes empty along with it, because there is no search data coming in.

Helping customers find results

Put the fields customers search by into the displayed list: name, address, area.
Keep category values consistent — see Domain management.
Combine it with Area filtering: narrowing the area before typing gives far tighter results.

The Directions button

Click a store — on the map or in the list — and the detail card opens with a Directions button.

Clicking it opens Google Maps in a new tab, with the destination pre-set to the store's coordinates. From there the customer picks a travel mode and starts navigating.

Directions use coordinates, not the address

The destination comes from the store's coordinates, not from the text in your address column. A store with wrong coordinates sends customers to the wrong place — and that is the kind of mistake they only discover after setting off.

If a store has no coordinates, the directions button does nothing. See Preparing your data.

Every click is counted

Clicks on Directions are recorded and appear in your analytics — the closest signal you have to "a customer intends to visit". Remember it counts button clicks, not actual visits. See What the metrics mean.

Measuring routes inside the editor

While building a map, right-click on it for a menu with Directions from here and Directions to here — handy for checking the distance between two points yourself. This is a tool for the map builder, not something customers see.

Next: Area filtering — let customers filter stores by province and ward.