Scanning opens the exact spot in the phone’s map app, ready for directions, which is far more reliable than a written address.
Coordinates beat a written address for an entrance, a loading bay or anywhere without a street number. They are also unforgiving: get the sign wrong on a longitude and you send somebody to another continent, and the code will look perfectly correct while doing it.
Enter content to generate QR code
The code holds a geo: URI: your latitude and longitude, plus an optional label. The coordinates are repeated inside the query and the label placed in brackets after them, which is the documented way to keep the pin exactly where you put it. That detail matters. The obvious form, coordinates plus a text search, makes the map search for the label near the point and can land on a similarly named place in the next town.
41.9095, -87.6773, labeled Wicker Park, and the code holds:
geo:41.9095,-87.6773?q=41.9095,-87.6773(Wicker%20Park)The coordinates appear twice on purpose. A map app reads the query, and the documented way to keep the pin exactly where you put it while still showing a name is to make the query the coordinates and put the label in brackets after them — the obvious form, coordinates plus a text search, makes the map search for the name instead.
Street addresses resolve to whatever the map provider thinks the address means, which is often the middle of a building or the wrong side of a block. Coordinates resolve to the point you chose. That is the difference between a delivery driver at your loading bay and one at your reception, and between guests at the right field gate and guests in a lane.
Use decimal degrees, with a minus sign for south and west: 51.5007, -0.1246. Five decimal places is about a meter, which is more than enough; more digits only lengthen the code. Take the coordinates by standing where you want the pin and reading them off a map app, rather than from a postcode lookup.
The optional location name is displayed by the map app alongside the pin. It is there to reassure the person that they have arrived at the right place, so use the name they will see on the building or the sign, not a description and not an address, which invites the map to re-interpret it.
The device default: Apple Maps on an iPhone, Google Maps on most Android phones. The geo: format is understood by both.
Coordinates. They put the pin exactly where you stood, which matters for entrances, loading bays, venues and anywhere without a clear street address. An address is re-interpreted by the map provider, sometimes generously.
Decimal degrees, latitude first, with a minus sign for south and west. Five decimal places is roughly a meter and plenty; extra digits only make the code denser.
It drops the pin, and the map app offers directions from there in one tap. That is deliberate: the phone should route from wherever the person actually is.
Yes. The optional name is shown beside the pin without changing where it lands, because the coordinates stay authoritative, so the map cannot decide the name means somewhere else.
Not on this code. A geo: URI is handed straight to the map app and never touches a browser, so no redirect is involved. For a venue that might move, point a dynamic code at a page carrying the current address and a map link, and change the page.