Latitude 0, longitude 0 is a real place. It is a point in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa, and any listing your MLS sends with zeros instead of coordinates is placed there.
One such listing is enough to ruin a map, because a map that fits itself to its results has to widen far enough to include the Atlantic. Your whole market collapses into a dot and the ocean fills the screen.
Two different problems that look the same
Before fixing anything, work out which one you have.
- Pins are visible in the ocean, or the map is zoomed out with your listings bunched in one corner. One or more properties carry zero coordinates. Keep reading.
- The map is over the ocean at world zoom with no pins at all. That map found no listings, and no starting point is configured, so it opened at its last-resort centre, which is 0,0. Set Starting Point Latitude and Starting Point Longitude on the Maps tab and the empty state gets a sensible view.
Why zeros arrive in the first place
Coordinates should either be present or absent. Some MLS feeds send a zero instead of leaving the field empty, and zero is a number, so it is imported and stored like any other value. Nothing downstream can tell the difference between a real coordinate and a placeholder one.
The usual sign that this is source data is the MLS’s own portal. Open the same listing there. If it has no map on the MLS’s site either, the coordinates were never entered, and what you received is the feed’s way of saying so.
Finding the properties responsible
- Look at the map and find the pin or the bubble sitting alone, far from everything else. It is usually near the west coast of Africa.
- Click it to open the listing.
- Read the latitude and longitude on the property. Two zeros confirm it.
- Repeat until the map fits your market. There are often several, and they all sit at the same point, which is why they show as one bubble rather than several pins.
A bubble that refuses to break apart no matter how far you zoom is the fastest way to spot this. Real listings separate as the map zooms, since no two properties share an exact coordinate. A count that stays put through every zoom level is a stack of listings at 0,0.
What actually fixes it
There are three routes, and only one of them is permanent.
Ask your MLS to correct the data. This is the permanent fix, because coordinates are imported on every sync and the feed is the only place a lasting change can be made. Report the MLS numbers of the affected listings so they have something specific to look at.
Keep the listings out of your site. If the properties are outside your market anyway, narrow the import task’s filters so they never arrive. Nothing is drawn from a listing you did not import.
Take the individual property out of view. Move it to draft or to the trash. In standalone mode the map and search index mirror published properties only, so it disappears from both immediately, and the next sync updates the listing without republishing it.
Editing the coordinates by hand is the one route that does not work. Sync writes the feed’s values over yours the next time that listing changes, and the pin returns to the ocean without warning. Fix it at the feed or remove the property.
When there are no coordinates to recover
If your MLS confirms it has no coordinates for those listings, the remaining option is to derive them from the address. We maintain a separate add-on for that, which sends the imported address to a free geocoding service and stores what comes back. It depends on the address being complete enough to match, so it recovers many listings rather than all of them. Contact support if you want it tested on your site.
Frequently asked questions
Can MLSImport skip listings at 0,0?
Zero is a valid coordinate as far as any map is concerned, and treating it as missing would be a guess about your MLS’s intent. Removing or filtering out the individual listings is the reliable route, and support can tell you which ones they are.
Why did this start happening after weeks of a normal map?
A new listing arrived with zeros. The map was correct until that one was imported, and it will be correct again once it is dealt with.
Does this affect search as well as the map?
Only searches that use location. A property at 0,0 will never match a map area or a radius around a real place, though it still appears in ordinary text and dropdown searches.
My map opens over the ocean but every pin is in the right place. Why?
One listing at 0,0 is dragging the view, and it is off screen at that zoom rather than absent. Zoom out one more level and the lone pin appears.
Related
- Listings missing from the map
- Setting up the map: MapBox key, starting point and zoom
- How pin clustering works
- The WpResidence map is zoomed out and the listings are clustered
- Controlling which listings are imported
Send us the page with the bad map and we will identify the listings sitting at zero for you.