What is Geohash Converter?

This tool converts latitude/longitude coordinates into geohash strings and back. Geohashes encode a location as a short string like "9q8yy" where each added character narrows the area — handy for database indexes, proximity search, and compact location sharing. Precision is adjustable from 1 to 12 characters.

The alphabet skips a, i, l and o so a hash copied by hand cannot be mistaken for 1 or 0. Because the encoding is hierarchical, two nearby points usually share a leading prefix, which is what lets an ordinary string index behave like a spatial one. Alongside the cell you get its eight neighbours and CSV, GeoJSON or KML export.

How to use

1. Type latitude and longitude — for example 37.7749, -122.4194 — or paste a geohash to decode.
2. Adjust the precision slider to control how many characters (and how tight a bounding box) you get.
3. Copy the geohash, or read the decoded center point and bounding box with its dimensions.

When to use

• Storing a delivery pin as a sortable string in a database with no geo index.
• Bucketing GPS traces into cells before counting visits per area.
• Checking how large a precision-6 cell really is before settling on a level.

Result

A developer indexing cafés for proximity search converts 37.7749, -122.4194 at precision 7 to "9q8yyk8" — a cell about 150 m across — and stores it as the database sort key.

FAQ

Why do two points on opposite sides of a street get different geohashes?

Cell borders fall on fixed grid lines, not on anything in the real world. Two points a metre apart can land in neighbouring cells, which is why a proximity search also sweeps the eight surrounding cells the tool lists.

How much ground does one cell cover at each precision level?

Precision 5 runs about 4.9 by 4.9 km, precision 6 about 1.2 km by 610 m, precision 7 about 153 by 153 m, and precision 9 drops to roughly 4.8 by 4.8 m. The exact bounding box for your level is printed with the result.

Can I shorten a geohash just by cutting characters off the end?

Yes. Dropping the last character widens the cell to its parent, so 9q8yyk8 truncated to 9q8yy still contains the original point. Going the other way and adding characters back is not possible without the source coordinates.

Why are the letters a, i, l and o missing from geohash strings?

The base32 alphabet drops them to avoid confusion with 1, 0 and each other when a code is read aloud or retyped. A string containing any of those four is rejected here rather than quietly decoded to the wrong place.

Does a geohash tell you which city or country the point is in?

No. It encodes a rectangle on the grid and nothing more. A place name needs a separate reverse-geocoding lookup. What a geohash does give you is a key that sorts nearby locations next to each other.

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