The change was not intentional, and we have reverted it back. The current Placefinder service is shutting down on November 17th but we will continue to support our YQL table for non-commercial applications that are limited to 2000 queries per day per developer. We recommend you transition your code to the YQL table if you are in this category.

The problem was fixed sometime between 6PM EDT and 9:45PM EDT saving me from revising my code. Thank you Stephen for posting that solution. I wish Yahoo was as helpful as you.

Regarding the change to BOSS and a paid for model starting on Nov 12, 2012 how about Yahoo sending an Email to people using the interface! The conversion from Geocoder to Placefinder took me and many others by surprise, and I'm not in the mood for a repeat performance.

We had a half dozen applications stop working today for the same reason. Don't know why, but a quick shift over to json_decode did the trick. Note that pulling the result out of the decoded array changed slightly.

(1) Change the flag sent from P to J

(2) $result_array = json_decode($reply_from_yahoo,TRUE);

(3) address_array = $result_array['ResultSet']['Result'];# formerly ['ResultSet']['Result'][0]

This free service seems to be disappearing on Nov 12. See: http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/

We have been using the above for over a year, Now it is returning XML instead of serialized PHP. Anybody know why?"

Dear Eddie, you have said that you typically receive a reply from Yahoo within 2 business days but that's not the case for my questions I have posted on forum about PlaceFinder API. Last time I posted a question, I got a reply after 21 days and now I have posted a question 4 days back and I have not received nay reply.

I have tried contacting via the placefinder contact form and never received a reply. Is there any way to get in touch with someone at yahoo regarding this product?

Yahoo! Geo Technologies is pleased to announce the availability of PlaceFinder support in YQL. The geo.placefinder table allows users to make requests to PlaceFinder via YQL queries. The new table provides several different ways to access PlaceFinder. A description of the supported requests and parameters can be retrieved using http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q...&appid=test. Here are a few examples:

Geocoding a street address (1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC) using free-form input format:

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%221600%20Pennsylvania%20Ave%2C%20Washington%2C%20DC%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20line1%3D%22701%20First%20Ave%22%20and%20line2%3D%22Sunnyvale%2C%20CA%2094089%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22sfo%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22Eiffel%20Tower%22%20and%20lang%3D%22fr%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%2237.416275%2C%20-122.025092%22%20and%20gflags%3D%22R%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20house%3D%22701%22%20and%20street%3D%22First%20Ave%22%20and%20city%3D%22Sunnyvale%22%20and%20state%3D%22CA%22%20and%20postal%3D%2294089%22&appid=test

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20line1%2C%20line2%2C%20line3%2C%20line4%2C%20cross%2C%20timezone%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22701%20First%20Ave%2C%20Sunnyvale%2C%20CA%22%20and%20flags%3D%22T%22%20and%20gflags%3D%22C%22&appid=test

Welcome to the Product Announcements Forum for Yahoo! PlaceFinder. This is the place to learn about updated releases and new features added to PlaceFinder

PlaceFinder is a web service that translates street addresses and place names into geographic coordinates. This translation is called geocoding, and it is an important feature to any location-aware application or service. You can use PlaceFinder to provide you with additional information as well, such as formatted postal addresses, area codes, timezones, and WOEIDs.

PlaceFinder is a RESTful service, meaning that every input needed by the web service is passed in the URL. PlaceFinder supports many parameters, so taking time to read the documentation would be worthwhile.