How To Optimize Multi-Stop Routes With Google Maps

If you want to find the fastest route from point A to point B, Google Maps is great. It’s free, fast, and user-friendly for all technical skill levels. It’s one of the best route planning tools for simple scenarios, with turn-by-turn directions and live traffic updates. 

But Google Maps was never designed for complex multi-stop route planning. We’re talking about the situation that delivery drivers, couriers, field service technicians, and other professional drivers face every day, when they have a list of 20 or 30 different visits to make.

Now it’s not about the route from A to B, but rather A to B to C to D and so on, so we can travel to multiple destinations efficiently, without wasting time and fuel. Now we have a route optimization problem — and Google Maps is not a route optimization tool. The higher the number of stops, the less useful Google Maps becomes.

Here’s what you CAN do when it comes to Google Maps route optimization:

• Add up to 25 stops to your destination list.
• Manually rearrange stops to get a more efficient route. 

In this article we’ll show you how to do both — and suggest some easier alternatives.

💡Just want an easy way to find the most efficient routes for a delivery business? Try Routific free for 7 days to see how easy it can be.

How to optimize a route using Google Maps

Ok, so Google Maps is not a delivery route planner, or an advanced route optimizer — but what if you want to use it to plan complex routes anyway? There are three ways, depending on how many stops you want to optimize:

1. 10 stops or less
2. 10-25 stops
3. More than 25 stops

Optimize up to 10 stops in Google Maps

If your route has ten stops or less, doing a manual optimization is relatively easy. Just drag and drop the stops around in your list until you have an order that makes sense. Keep an eye on Google’s estimate of total trip time to confirm you’ve got the most efficient route. 

Use the “Copy link” feature to get a permanent link to your route that you can save and share with others. We prefer this to just sending the route directly to a phone, for two reasons:

• The link to send directions to your phone doesn’t always work
• Once the route is open on your phone, it’s easy to accidentally click out of it — and then all your work is lost.

💡 If you want more detailed step-by-step instructions, see our article on how to plan a multi-stop route in Google Maps. 

Optimize 10-25 stops in Google Maps

You can’t add more than 10 stops directly onto a Google Maps page. But there’s a workaround that will let you create a route with up to 25 stops:

1. Split your list of stops into groups of no more than 10 each. If you want your sorting job to be easier in the last step, create groups of stops that are close together. 
2. Open three different Google Maps tabs in your browser.
3. Add one group of stops to each tab and sort them so you have good routes. 
4. Now open the More Than 10 website and copy and paste the URL for each tab into their form. 
5. Copy and paste the resulting combined URL back into Google Maps.

And now you have a Google Maps route with more than 10 stops! You may still need to tidy your route up a bit, but you can save and share it. 

💡 If you need to plan routes with up to 20 stops regularly, consider using RouteXL instead. It's a free web-based tool that allows up to 20 stops per route and can automatically optimize your stop order.

Optimize more than 25 stops in Google Maps

This is where things start to get complicated — and to be honest we don’t recommend it. 

But many small delivery businesses manage with Google Maps alone, so it’s possible, if you’re prepared to put in some effort. Here’s how to get it done. 

(Note this is a quick version of our tutorial — if you want more detail, check out our separate post on how to plan a delivery route with Google Maps.)

Keep in mind that you can’t plan multiple routes at the same time. You’ll need to plan your routes in batches.

1. Create driver territories and assign stops

If you have more than one driver, cluster your stops into driver territories. This can be done using postal codes, or by dividing the city up into neighborhoods or zones like north, south, east, and west. Aim for clusters of 25 stops each.

💡 The easiest way to do this is using a spreadsheet. Try our free delivery route spreadsheet template.

2. Build routes in batches

Once you have your stop clusters, you can build a route for each cluster. 

Use the same process as for optimizing 10-25 stops — add your stops to Google Maps, sort them manually, then use More Than 10 to combine them all. 

You will end up with an optimized route for each cluster. It can be hard to keep track of all your Google Maps tabs while you’re doing this! Try using tab groups to keep each route separate and organized. 

3. Share routes

It’s pretty easy to share a Google Maps route. There are two ways to do it:

• Click “Copy link” below your stop list
• Use the options menu at the top left hand corner of your screen to get a shareable link.

‍

Drivers can then easily open the routes in the Google Maps app on their Android phone or iPhone. 

When to use a proper route optimizer

Once you’ve hit the limits of Google Maps, planning efficient routes becomes very time-consuming and prone to human errors. A delivery business commonly spends a couple of hours in Google Maps just for a couple of route plans. That can get very expensive in a small business! 

The time and cost savings alone are a great reason to use decent route planning software that includes route optimization.

A proper multi-stop route planner will also help you solve other problems that many delivery managers face:

1. You have routing constraints

• Time windows: Your customer wants their delivery to arrive within a certain timeframe (e.g. between 2pm and 4pm).
• Driver shift times and breaks: Your driver’s shift time needs to be incorporated into the route and/or tracked. Or your driver takes a break that needs to be accounted for.
• Vehicle capacity: You need to pay attention to how much a delivery vehicle can carry.
• Stop distribution and route assignment: You need a solution that evenly distributes stops across your fleet of drivers, looks for the minimum number of drivers required, or assigns routes to the best or nearest driver.
• Driver & vehicle prerequisites: You need to assign a driver with a specific skill-set or customer relationship to a stop. Or you need a certain vehicle (e.g. refrigerated) to handle a specific stop.

2. You need to manage the rest of the delivery operation

There is more to managing a delivery business than planning optimal routes. Route planners often begin looking for alternatives to Google Maps when they encounter problems related to fleet management, delivery experience, and internal operations. Delivery businesses of all sizes tend to look for software solutions that offer functionality like:

• Live route progress: To manage deliveries efficiently you need to be able to track driver locations, see if they’re sticking to their routes, ensure they’re on target for the ETAs communicated to your customers, and know when a problem is happening.
• Customer status updates: There’s been a massive shift in consumer expectations since Uber, Amazon, and others brought new technologies to the delivery space. Modern route optimization platforms can automatically communicate ETAs to customers by email, via SMS text messages or even via live tracking links.
• Proof of delivery: Capturing a signature or photograph as proof of delivery gives a delivery business legal protection and helps customers identify who collected the package, and at what time.
• Driver mobile apps: Android and iOS apps that can easily be downloaded from an app store make it easy to dispatch routes to drivers, and for them to manage their routes on their phones.

Benefits of route optimization software

Our interviews with Routific users have shown that a delivery business can reduce its driving time by up to 40%, and route planning time by up to 95%, by using delivery route optimization software. 

Plan routes in minutes, not hours

Let’s start with time-savings for the person doing the planning work. There’s an easy way to estimate the financial value of this time: Multiply the hours spent on route planning by your hourly wage. Now think about how else you could spend those hours — maybe on winning new customers or developing new products — and the monetary value of those tasks. 

Since route optimization software can reduce route planning time down to a couple of minutes, this is one of the most immediately recognizable impacts for planners who use manual or semi-manual routing methods.

Lower costs to increase profitability

Poor route planning costs money! There’s one key performance indicator that explains this: cost per delivery.

Cost per delivery is simply your wages + fuel costs for a period, divided by the number of deliveries you make in that period.   The more deliveries you can make, the more your cost per delivery comes down and the closer you are to profitability. 

‍

Route optimization has become particularly important to delivery businesses because of ever-increasing competition in the market space. The basic requirement for profitability is that revenues must exceed costs — but delivery businesses don’t have a lot of room to raise their prices. In fact, research by Morgan Stanley points out that the biggest reason potential customers do not opt for delivery is because of the price. That leaves delivery companies with nowhere to go but to lower their costs by operating as efficiently as possible.

Understanding Google Maps Platform vs. Google Maps

Google has more than one mapping product, which can get confusing. Here are the key differences between them:

• Google Maps: The free consumer app and website we all know and love. That’s the one this article is all about. Use it for exploring a city, getting directions, and planning short routes.  
• Google My Maps: A flexible tool for creating custom maps. Use it to plan trips, or to create and share collections of locations.  
• Google Maps Platform: A developer service that provides mapping APIs for building custom applications. Use it if you’re willing and able to build your own app, or build Google’s vehicle routing functionality into your own in-house software platform. 

Google Maps Platform includes:

• Maps API for embedding interactive maps
• Routes API for directions and route optimization
• Places API for location data and business information

While developers can build custom route planning applications using Google Maps Platform, this requires programming skills and ongoing subscription costs. If you're a delivery business looking for an out-of-the-box solution, look for dedicated route optimization software like Routific  instead.