Putting Every Pin to Work: How OLX Turned Maps Into a Growth Engine with Cloudfresh

Challenges

Historically, OLX’s business model relied on city-level location matching—sufficient for general buying and selling. However, the rise of service-oriented verticals like short-term rentals, real estate, and jobs introduced new user expectations:

• Precise Location Needs: Users needed to know exactly where a service, rental, or job opportunity was located—proximity to landmarks, transportation, and lifestyle infrastructure became key differentiators.
• Lack of Contextual Discovery: Without integrated location intelligence, OLX listings lacked the contextual value (e.g., nearby amenities, autofill addresses, map-based exploration).
• User Trust and Convenience: In categories like short-term rentals, being able to visually confirm a location before booking was becoming critical to growth.

Short-Term Rentals: The Starting Point for a Larger Change

In Poland, starting in 2022, users began organically using OLX for vacation rentals. Over time, the demand for location-specific features and better listing quality sparked a rapid transformation.

Listings exploded—OLX saw 45,000+ new listings and 7 million guest interactions year over year. Revenue surged by $9M, with 100% YoY growth in the short-term rentals category.

To keep up with this momentum:

• Calendar-based search and district/city-level location filtering became must-have features.
• Many properties had no digital presence, yet users still demanded precise locational information, a clear signal to evolve.
• Users expected a visual, trustworthy, and comprehensive experience—map-driven interface became essential.

With more users renting homes through OLX and choosing based on location, the team realized the platform needed to shift from a simple classifieds model to a map-powered discovery engine.

Solutions

In collaboration with Cloudfresh, OLX adopted the Google Maps Platform, integrating advanced APIs to meet evolving user needs:

• Places API: Enriched listings with data about nearby amenities, such as schools, restaurants, hotels, and transport, adding immediate context to properties and services based on Google’s business data.

• Maps JavaScript API & Geocoding: Enabled exact location mapping, interactive search experiences, and map-based discovery features.

• Autocomplete API: Made inputting addresses simpler, more accurate, and easier to manage at scale.

• Privacy Controls: Allowed users to show only the general area if desired, maintaining security while increasing transparency.

This transformation began organically in OLX Poland’s short-term rental category and quickly expanded due to user demand and business growth to other categories like real estate, motors, and jobs.

While at the same time, at the Ukrainian platform, where retail and marketplace categories dominate, Static Maps implementation was introduced. It provides enough location context for buyers to see where a seller is approximately located—especially for self-pickup and local delivery—without requiring an exact address. This meets both user convenience and privacy needs in markets where online purchasing increasingly includes geo-contextual logistics.

Results

Thanks to Google Maps Platform and the strategic support of Cloudfresh, OLX achieved a significant transformation with measurable business impact:

• 95% adoption of new location intelligence features by early 2025 across core service categories.
• Enhanced property and service listings enriched with contextual data like nearby infrastructure and amenities.
• A more intuitive, map-driven search and discovery experience, improving how users explore and engage with listings.
• Scalable innovation across Real Estate, Jobs, Motors, and more, fueling OLX’s evolution from a classifieds marketplace to a local accommodation and service discovery engine.

The solution is easy to implement, scales effortlessly with platform growth, and now powers location intelligence across key OLX service categories—including Short-Term Rentals, Real Estate, Jobs, and Motors.

Cloudfresh’s Role

As a certified Google Maps Authorized Reseller, Cloudfresh played a central role in:

• Identifying the right mix of APIs for OLX’s evolving verticals.
• Advising on scalable architecture to support future growth.
• Providing integration and adoption support, ensuring a smooth rollout across teams and countries.
• Driving innovation by aligning product use cases with Google Maps’ capabilities.
• Offering special pricing and billing flexibility to help OLX optimize cost-efficiency at scale.
• Managing API and vendor-level changes to reduce operational load and free up internal resources.

By integrating Google Maps Platform with Cloudfresh’s strategic support, OLX unlocked a new phase of growth powered by location intelligence. The enhanced listings, intuitive map search, and contextual location data now power millions of meaningful transactions every month.

Future Plans

Looking ahead, OLX plans to:

• Expand map-based discovery and filtering features across more categories.
• Leverage Google Maps data to analyze regional trends and optimize platform content.
• Continue enhancing user experience with AI-driven location suggestions and smart listings.

Cloudfresh remains a trusted partner, ready to support OLX through this next phase—offering ongoing support, optimization strategies, and technical expertise as new features are scaled and refined.