New satellite imagery software has made it possible to quickly pinpoint any place on earth. But this software is often used to find more details about an address, not to locate an address by its details. By converting your longitude and latitude coordinates into a physical address, you can make your information more practical and accessible.
Find a free satellite imagery website or software package that fits your tastes. If you don't know where to start looking, this usually includes any software or website that lets you search maps using a specific address. If you can use a website or software to get directions from one place to another, it will usually have full satellite capabilities.
Find the longitude and latitude coordinates of your website. These are called "coordinates," and are very specific geographical pinpoints. They are represented as a series of numbers, referred to in order from most general to most specific as degrees, minutes and seconds. The official format is 42° 58' 36" (42 degrees, 58 minutes and 36 seconds). Longitude refers to the north-south coordinate--"up and down" from the equator--and latitude refers to the east-west coordinate--"left and right" from the meridian.
Open your satellite website or software, and enter the longitude and latitude coordinates. Longitude should always be listed first, with latitude being indicated second. Click OK to see the address and any other available information. If your software or website does not have that location listed or doesn't support coordinate searching, consider using a different service.
If your satellite software or website requires you to enter the information as a decimal, convert your coordinates from degrees, minutes and seconds into the decimal format. To do that, you need to calculate how many degrees and fractions of degrees are in each of your longitude and latitude coordinates. There are 60 minutes in a degree, and 60 seconds in a minute. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge has coordinates of 37°49′11″N, 122°28′43″W. The decimal representation of those coordinates would be 37.81972, -122.47861. To calculate the decimal digits, divide your minutes by 60 (49/60 and 28/60 in the Golden Gate example), divide your seconds by 3600 (11/3600 and 43/3600) and add those two numbers together. In decimal representation, west and south are always negative coordinates.
