Yahoo! PlaceFinder

Yahoo! PlaceFinder is a geocoding Web service that helps developers make their applications location-aware by converting street addresses or place names into geographic coordinates (and vice versa).

PlaceFinder recognizes a large number of place formats and returns rich geographic data about each result, including geographic coordinates, address components, and WOEID. The WOEIDs returned by the service can be passed to Yahoo!'s GeoPlanet API for further geographic enrichment and discovery.

PlaceFinder replaces the Yahoo! Maps Web Services Geocoding API, which has been deprecated.

How Do I Get Started?

  1. Read the information below
  2. Get an Application ID
  3. Read the documentation

Using the Web Service

Overview

The PlaceFinder web service allows you to convert street addresses (like “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC”) or place names (like “Washington, DC”) into geographic coordinates (like latitude 38.898717, longitude -77.035974) that you can use as the center of a map or the position for a map marker. This conversion is called “geocoding” and can be used to make your applications location-aware.

The service also allows you to convert geographic coordinates into street addresses or place names. This conversion is called "reverse geocoding" and can be used to provide user feedback when only coordinates are known.

Example Requests to PlaceFinder Webservice

Find the coordinates of a street address:
http://where.yahooapis.com/geocode?q=1600+Pennsylvania+Avenue,+Washington,+DC&appid=[yourappidhere]

Find the street address nearest to a point:
http://where.yahooapis.com/geocode?q=38.898717,+-77.035974&gflags=R&appid=[yourappidhere]

Documentation

Read the documentation to learn how to use the Yahoo! PlaceFinder web service.

Rate Limits

Use of the Yahoo! PlaceFinder API web service should not exceed 50,000 requests per day.
If you believe your application will exceed such volume, please contact us.

Terms of Use

Use of this service is subject to the Yahoo! APIs Terms of Use.

Support & Community

The Yahoo! PlaceFinder API is discussed on the Yahoo! PlaceFinder developer forum. Join the conversation there to get help and touch base with other developers interested in the Yahoo! PlaceFinder API.