Some deep links examples

Map Editors Community Waze Developers Community
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Hey everyone,

Waze tools can be of tremendous help for users. We wanted to share a couple of examples of great API usage for some inspiration :slight_smile:

The Detroit Lions Football team used Waze to help fans easily park before the game:

And Stade de France added deep links to their web site, helping users make their way to the stadium:

And there are many more examples for using Waze to help fans, customers and users. Have some more to share? This is the right place for it.

Thanks,

Noam

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Hello,

The Groupama Stadium in Lyon, France, also uses deep links to guide fans to stadium parkings or relay parkings.

(Huge advertising for Waze) :wink:

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Thanks, great example. Can you share how this affects traffic and helps fans?

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Regarding traffic, you avoid many traffic jams around the stadium as you do not have to look at the signs, just follow Waze.
And for the fans/wazers, they can be sure that they will be well guided to the final destination. :wink:

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Hi Wazers! Good day. I’ll just ask if there is a way to control deep links to view results in Google or Places tab in a search query or automatically select the first result?

Also, I like to know what particular variant of deep link is most preferred on a web page or most browser-friendly for smartphones and iOS? Thank you.

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Hey,

Unfortunately there is no way to control deep links to view results in Google or Places. Can you explain more about the use case you had in mind?

Regarding your second question: We recommend using wazew.com/ul - you can read all about it in our Developers site. This way the links will provide a landing page for desktop and mobile devices that that have Waze installed.

We would love to hear more feedback and questions, and to better understand what you’re trying to achieve - maybe we can help. Thanks!

Noam

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Hi Noam,

Thank you for reading onto this. My motivation for Google or Places instead of Waze results is on cases when a particular location or set of locations aren’t in Waze yet or not updated.

A Waze location should ideally already have a preview venue ID. However, this is not always the case. It would take some time to get one location approved or discovered by the community. I could also think that even if it already have an ID but moved to a different location because of calamity, lease expires, shutdown, change of ownership/management, company merges, etc.

I know Waze could get results from Google and in some cases, one could trust Google results especially if one has fine control of Google results via tools like Google Maps and Google MyBusiness. The changes would be readily available within 72 hours in contrast to Waze where waiting for a venue ID will be left arbitrarily to approving powers. I respect that Waze has its own ways of doing things but I think it would be better if users/developers can control search results especially on cases that Waze has no entries and got some from trusted sources.

On the second part, yes, that’s where I have been experimenting already. In my case, the ideal solution would be to have a button opening a landing web page then launching Waze via Waze’s page. This is good for a few reasons. Visitors are made aware that a developer’s site supports Waze. So, if they are on a Desktop, even if no Waze installed, they can come back on a mobile later. If a visitor’s on a mobile without Waze, they can still see a livemap then have an opportunity to download Waze via a link conveniently.

However, the deep links behave differently for Android and iOS. What exactly runs so well in Android fails in iOS and so is the opposite. I tried different combinations of ID, coordinates, search queries, and found out there is no sure way to open a link then navigate with Waze. Yes, opening then navigating.

I tried browsing at Stackoverflow but the solution there doesn’t work for me either. There are a lot of related issues there last time I checked but it seemed very quiet.

I also discovered an undocumented parameter “?location=” along the way.

The solution I have chosen was to use “waze://” protocol on a button. Then have CSS to hide that button depending on a user’s device. Desktop users will not see it but mobile users will see it. There are disadvantages however. Desktop users will not be made aware of Waze support unless you mention it elsewhere. Mobile users will have to launch Google Play or App Store and install Waze first to make use of the link. Or if not, you are left with a dead link (worst part).

Is there a way to make this better? Thank you for looking onto this.

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I just randomly discovered (on page 2 of a Google search I did) that there was an improved livemap UI available to get directions to a specific place.

It works with https://www.waze.com/directions/*country*/*city*/*place-name*/*place-ID*.html
Example: https://www.waze.com/directions/switzerland/lausanne/musee-olympique/4325841.43455019.1368392.html
wazedirections.png
I noticed that when you open such a link on mobile, the route options don’t load and you can only see the destination. However there is no way to start a drive, you are only offered links to download the Waze App.
wazedirectionsmobile.png

  • Is this old/new or still in development?
  • Wouldn’t it make sense to use deep links to offer the possibility to start a drive from that URL when it’s open on a smartphone?
  • Is this supposed to be an alternative to deep links in anyway or just a way for Partners to display on their website via an iframe?
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Hi,

I used to be able to start Waze navigation by using an intent with a geo URI scheme in Android. However, since a few updates ago, this no longer works. The Waze app is launched, but does not start navigation nor is there any indication that it processed the geo URI. Any idea why this no longer works or if there are any workarounds?

My code looks something like this:

String uriString = String.format(Locale.getDefault(), "geo:0,0?q=%f,%f", latitudeInDegrees, longitudeInDegrees);

mContext.startActivity(new Intent(ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uriString)));

I know I can use the Waze URL directly to create the Intent as explained here: https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks/, but I want to let the user decide which map app to navigate with.

Thanks!

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Thanks for this very valuable feedback! I shared it with the team and they are looking into it. Question: Are you using the UL form of our deep links? It is supposed to provide the experience you’re looking for.

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Not now, as I discovered there’s a different behavior for Android and iOS. I’m currently using the configuration on mobile devices assuming Waze was installed without the web experience (2nd bullet on https://developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks/) e.g. “waze://?q=” for search queries and "“waze://?preview_venue_id=” if an ID is available.

The desired effect should be to be able to open Waze then to navigate. Somehow this works for both OS without the UL. Adding UL in the deep links just opens the app.

What I have originally have in mind was using the Waze’s page instead to do this and let the user’s have the web experience (as a nice fallback). Thank you for sharing this to the team!

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This is a work in progress - an experimental page that will be officially released within a few weeks. We do recommend you use this link for venues, and it will include all of the features and capabilities you raised. Nice find!

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Thanks for the clarification :slight_smile:
I guess you can give an FYI to the team working on it that Google Search results are already giving those links to anyone, so more people may find it in the near future.
GsearchP3.png
I was actually looking into my family’s restaurants which are also doing advertisements via Waze Local Brands, and checking more deeply for what existed out there, I suddenly saw that on page 3, so it’s still “hidden” for now. :wink:

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Regarding the /ul? links, I would like to report that localization is missing (e.g. it/ul? for Italian) and this is not optimal for countries where many people still don’t speak English (unfortunately).

Another “problem” is that Waze doesn’t provide any error if the venue ID is wrong or not existing anymore, it just shows your current position. Someone deleted the place I’ve created the link for long ago (I hope it wasn’t me, by mistake :roll: ), and the link didn’t work, I almost thought it was a beta problem.

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@redviper26 I don’t know if you read those other topics, too, but I think this may be an interesting change which shouldn’t be much effort to achieve.

A simple wildcard search for the favourites, too, just like in the normal location search. (-> using the deeplinks of course)

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For example:
https://waze.com/ul?q=Hee+Lai+Ton+Centrestage&navigate=yes

Symptom

  1. Randomly showing no result found while using this link
  2. Sometime while showing no result found, press places then can find the result
  3. Restart Waze app then try again with below link, then can find the result

Attached youtube url to demo the issue.
https://youtu.be/DwxwKSBJoxY

Above video showing is Android 9 with latest Waze.
Same problem happens on my iPhone X with iOS 12 also.
Actually I’m facing this issue since at least 4 months ago and facing same issue over multiple devices types.

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Hello and welcome to the forums.

Please note that we are just a bunch of volunteers here, we cannot do anything to the app. If you need to file a bug report, you should use Waze support form:
https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6276841?hl=en&ref_topic=6262587
I think deep link issues fall into the “Other” category of the form.

Nevertheless, your issue seems like a network timeout as only the first attempt fails.

You can try to add GPS coordinates to your deep link. Please check the parameter from the documentation and coordinates from the map.
https://waze.com/ul?q=Hee+Lai+Ton+Centrestage&ll=3.1114568,101.6391201&navigate=yes
but I dont’ think there is much that can be done from outside the app.

Deepl links used to have venue-id parameter as well, but it’s no longer documented.

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Actually is not only first attempt fail.
Sometime it might happens first 3 attempt is success then 4th attempt failed, 5th attempt success.

Very weird.

erm… so venue-id parameter is deprecated already?

Thanks for your info, I did submit to waze support already.
But this issue happens since really long time ago, quite annoying :expressionless: