Your latitude and longitude
The blue sign shows your coordinates in decimal degrees, the format that most maps, apps and forms accept, and below it the same position in degrees, minutes and seconds. Each has its own copy button in the rows further down.
Coordinates are the most exact way to describe a place. An address names the nearest building, but a latitude and longitude pin down a single point: a parking spot, a tent site, a fishing spot, a gate on a farm or a survey marker. Search and rescue teams, drone pilots, geocachers and surveyors all work in coordinates for that reason.
Reading the numbers
Latitude says how far north or south of the equator you are, from 0 at the equator to 90 at the poles. Longitude says how far east or west of the prime meridian in Greenwich, England, from 0 to 180. In decimal form, south and west are written as negative numbers, which is why every point in the continental United States has a negative longitude.
The page shows five decimal places. The fifth decimal is about 1.1 metres at the equator, which is already finer than a phone can measure, so there is no point in more. Four decimals is about 11 metres, fine for most sharing. Three decimals is about 110 metres, enough for a neighbourhood.
| Decimal places | Example | About |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30.3 | 11 km |
| 2 | 30.27 | 1.1 km |
| 3 | 30.267 | 110 m |
| 4 | 30.2672 | 11 m |
| 5 | 30.26720 | 1.1 m |
Decimal degrees or degrees, minutes, seconds?
They describe the same point. Decimal degrees (30.26720, -97.74310) are easiest to paste into Google Maps, Apple Maps, a spreadsheet or a form. Degrees, minutes and seconds (30°16'01.9" N, 97°44'35.2" W) are traditional on paper charts, in aviation and marine navigation, and on many handheld GPS units.
A third format, degrees and decimal minutes, is common in boating and geocaching. Our guide to reading GPS coordinates shows how to convert between all three by hand.
How exact your coordinates are
The accuracy row tells you how far off the reading might be, as a radius. Outdoors with a clear sky, a modern phone is usually within about 5 metres. Indoors or on a laptop, it can be tens or hundreds of metres, because the position comes from Wi-Fi or the network rather than satellites.
All coordinates here use WGS 84, the reference system GPS itself uses and the default for web maps. Older paper maps in the US sometimes use NAD 27, which can place the same point tens of metres away, so check the datum before comparing against an old map.