Maps and Location Settings
Maps and Location Settings is a Salesforce Setup page that controls how the platform turns postal addresses into map coordinates and serves location features across Sales Cloud.
Definition
Maps and Location Settings is a Salesforce Setup page that controls how the platform turns postal addresses into map coordinates and serves location features across Sales Cloud. It is the front door for geocoding, which adds Latitude, Longitude, and accuracy values to Account, Contact, and Lead records so those records can be plotted, filtered by distance, and matched to geographic territory rules.
The page works hand in hand with Data Integration Rules, the engine that actually fills in the coordinates. Turning geocoding on is usually a one-time job. The harder part is the quality of the address data feeding it, because vague or malformed addresses produce coarse, low-confidence coordinates that place a record in the wrong spot.
How geocoding settings shape location features
What geocoding actually produces
Geocoding takes input text such as "123 Main St, San Francisco, CA" and returns a latitude and longitude pair. Salesforce writes those values into system-managed fields on the address-bearing standard objects. An Account billing address gets BillingLatitude and BillingLongitude, and the shipping address gets ShippingLatitude and ShippingLongitude. Contacts gain MailingLatitude and MailingLongitude on the mailing address. Leads use plain Latitude and Longitude. Each address also gets a companion accuracy field that records how confident the match was. These coordinate fields are read-only in the UI and do not appear on standard page layouts by default, but they are fully queryable through SOQL and the API. That matters because the real value of geocoding is downstream. A SOQL DISTANCE() filter can find every Account within 25 miles of a point, a territory rule can assign records by geographic boundary, and a mapping product can drop pins that line up with reality. Without coordinates, all of those features fall back to text fields like state and ZIP, which are coarser and harder to work with.
Data Integration Rules do the work
Geocoding is delivered through four standard Data Integration Rules, the modern replacement for the older Data.com Clean rules. The rules are named "Geocodes for Account Billing Address", "Geocodes for Account Shipping Address", "Geocodes for Contact Mailing Address", and "Geocodes for Lead Address". Each one maps a specific address to its coordinate and accuracy fields and uses an overwrite update method, so it replaces existing values rather than skipping populated records. You manage these rules from Setup under Data Integration Rules, and Maps and Location Settings links into the same configuration. When you first activate a rule, it runs against the existing records on that object as a batch. After activation, it also runs whenever a record is added or edited, so new addresses get coordinates automatically on save. There is a hard ceiling worth knowing: if an object holds more than 10 million records, the initial bulk run does not execute, and you geocode in another way. The service itself is asynchronous, so there can be a short delay between saving an address and seeing the coordinates populate.
Reading the accuracy field
Every geocoded record carries an accuracy value that tells you how precise the match is, and ignoring it is a common mistake. The possible values run from precise to vague: Address means the point sits in the same building, NearAddress is close to it, and Block and Street place it at the midpoint of a block or street. From there confidence drops through ExtendedZip, Zip, Neighborhood, City, County, and State, each one centering the point on a larger area. A value of Unknown means no match was found at all. For proximity search and tight territory boundaries, only the high-confidence levels are trustworthy. A record sitting at City accuracy is pinned to the center of the city, which can be many miles from the true address and will quietly skew any distance calculation. A practical habit is to query records grouped by their accuracy field, treat anything at Zip or coarser as suspect, and route those addresses back for cleanup. The accuracy field turns an invisible data-quality problem into something you can measure and report on.
Why address quality decides everything
Geocoding is only as good as the address you feed it. A clean, complete address resolves to a building-level point. A messy one resolves to a city center or fails outright. The usual culprits are predictable: a missing state or country, a misspelled city, abbreviations the service does not recognize, or extra noise stuffed into the street line. Salesforce documentation even calls out odd cases, like street names containing the word "and", which can confuse the parser. Because the geocode rules overwrite values, a bad edit to an address can downgrade a previously accurate record. The fix is to treat address hygiene as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-time pass. Validation rules can require a country, duplicate management keeps near-identical records from multiplying, and an address-validation integration can standardize input at the point of entry. Enabling geocoding often exposes data problems that were hidden before, because suddenly every weak address shows up as a low accuracy value or a blank coordinate. Treat that surfacing as a feature, not a nuisance, and use it to drive a cleanup backlog.
Feeding territory and proximity logic
The most common reason teams turn on geocoding is to power geographic assignment. Enterprise Territory Management can use a record's coordinates to evaluate whether an Account falls inside a mapped boundary, which supports far more flexible rules than matching on state or ZIP text alone. Sales teams use the same coordinates for proximity work: building call lists of nearby accounts, planning a route for a field rep, or filtering a report to a radius around a city. In Apex and SOQL this runs through geolocation functions such as DISTANCE() and GEOLOCATION(), which only return meaningful results when the underlying coordinates are present and accurate. This is also why accuracy matters so much here. A territory boundary drawn tightly around a metro area will misclassify any record stuck at City or State accuracy, because that record sits at an area center rather than its real location. Before relying on geographic territory rules, confirm that the relevant population geocodes at Address, NearAddress, or Street level, and quantify how many records fall short. The coordinate data is the foundation, and weak coordinates produce confident but wrong assignments.
Maps, Field Service, and the wider footprint
Maps and Location Settings sits at the center of several products that all consume coordinates. Salesforce Maps, a separately licensed product, plots records on interactive maps and plans optimized routes, and it depends on the same geocoded latitude and longitude to place pins correctly. Field Service relies on geocoding too, with its own Data Integration Rules that add coordinates to objects like Service Appointment so that scheduling and travel-time logic work. Enabling the standard geocode rules does not by itself grant a Maps license, and it does not configure those product-specific surfaces; each one has its own setup. There is also a privacy dimension that is easy to overlook. Precise location derived from an address can count as personal data under regulations like GDPR, particularly for individual Contacts rather than business Accounts. Before switching on Contact geocoding broadly, confirm the processing basis and document why the location data is needed. Treating Account and Contact addresses with the same blanket approach can create compliance gaps that are simpler to avoid than to remediate later.
Turn on geocoding through Data Integration Rules
Geocoding is enabled by activating the standard geocode Data Integration Rules, which Maps and Location Settings links to. You activate each address rule you care about, let the first run process existing records, and from then on new and edited records geocode automatically on save.
- Open Data Integration Rules
In Setup, use the Quick Find box to open Data Integration Rules. The four standard geocode rules for Account billing, Account shipping, Contact mailing, and Lead addresses are listed there, alongside the Maps and Location Settings configuration.
- Review the rule before activating
Select a geocode rule and review its field mapping and the overwrite behavior. To test safely first, you can update a few records manually with the bulk option deselected, confirm the coordinates populate as expected, then proceed.
- Activate the rule
Activate each address rule you need. On first activation the rule runs as a batch against the object's existing records. If the object holds more than 10 million records, the initial bulk run is skipped and you geocode those records another way.
- Confirm ongoing geocoding and check accuracy
After activation, records geocode automatically when added or edited. Because the service is asynchronous, allow a short delay, then query the Latitude, Longitude, and accuracy fields to confirm new records resolve at a usable confidence level.
Populates BillingLatitude, BillingLongitude, and BillingGeocodeAccuracy on the Account billing address.
Populates ShippingLatitude, ShippingLongitude, and ShippingGeocodeAccuracy on the Account shipping address.
Populates MailingLatitude, MailingLongitude, and MailingGeocodeAccuracy on the Contact mailing address.
Populates Latitude, Longitude, and GeocodeAccuracy on the Lead address.
- The geocode rules use an overwrite method, so reactivating a rule or editing an address can replace previously good coordinates.
- The initial bulk run does not execute on an object that already holds more than 10 million records.
- Coordinate and accuracy fields are read-only and hidden from standard layouts; query them through SOQL or the API to verify results.
- Activating geocoding does not grant a Salesforce Maps license or configure Field Service location rules; those are separate setups.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Maps and Location Settings in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Geocode Data Integration RulesSalesforce
- Geocode Information FieldsSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Maps and Location Settings.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Maps and Location Settings.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does enabling geocoding through Maps and Location Settings add to address-bearing records?
Q2. What does the GeocodeAccuracy field on a record indicate after Maps and Location Settings processes it?
Q3. Which Salesforce capability does enabling geocoding in Maps and Location Settings unlock?
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