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I'm using Google's Time Zone API to get the time zone id for latitude & longitude coordinates in the United States. However, I've noticed that some of the responses I'm getting are incorrect for certain lat & long coordinates.

Here's an example of a request and response where the coordinates point to a building in Columbus, GA:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?key=[YOUR_KEY_HERE]&location=32.4543934,-84.9896869&timestamp=1559239200

Here's the response:

{
   "dstOffset" : 3600,
   "rawOffset" : -21600,
   "status" : "OK",
   "timeZoneId" : "America/Chicago",
   "timeZoneName" : "Central Daylight Time"
}

Columbus, GA operates in Eastern time (America/New_York), but as you can see the response above is stating that the time zone is Central time (America/Chicago).

Although the coordinates are quite close to a time zone border (in this case it's the state line between Georgia and Alabama), they're still technically in the eastern time zone (Georgia).

If anyone has encountered this before or has an idea of why this is happening, I'd appreciate any input provided.

Ezzdean Bietar
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  • It might be a data issue on Google side, you should contact Google maps platform support team in order to get answer. – xomena May 01 '19 at 23:21
  • Please file a Google Maps Platform Timezone API issue in our Public issue tracker https://issuetracker.google.com. – rafon May 08 '19 at 03:01

1 Answers1

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The issue with regards to inaccuracy of timezone in places near timezone border have been acknowledged by the engineering team of Timezone API. However, as of the moment the team does not expect to fix this issue in the near future.

You may visit the recognized issue here and see comment #7 for more details with regards to the inaccuracy of the Timezone results near borders. You may also star the issue to receive notifications once there are new updates for the bug.

Shawn Domingo
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