GoogleMaps API officially states that they don’t provide a geocoder or route lookup via their API. A geocoder is a service that translates a name into geo coordinates like latitude and longitude.

The most popular and well-known geocoders are geocoder.us and Mikel Maron’s geocoder.

However, you can actually do a geocode query on GoogleMaps:

http://maps.google.com/maps?output=js&q=northville+mi

The result is an HTML page containing javascript with the location (and nearby locations). You can then parse this output to retrieve the latitude & longitude.

          

  
          

Northville, MI 48167