Since starting as API Evangelist here at CityGrid, I have been asked a couple of times how we stack up against other places APIs. So I went through the 11 other places APIs, gathering info, in an attempt to see what each offered.
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by longitude/latitude, "where" using cities, neighborhoods, zip codes, metro areas, addresses and intersections. Details for each places is also available.
- Database Size - 18 Million US Places
- Store / Cache Data - No Storage. Cache up to 15 minutes.
- Attribution - Include logo and phrase “powered by CityGrid; data from Infogroup ©[YEAR]”
- Multi-Provider IDs - Yes
- Meta Data - No
- Rating / Review - Yes
- Deals / Offers - Yes
- Revenue Share - Yes
- Call Limits - 10M / Month
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free
- Check-In - No
- Write - No
- Delete - No
Other
- Places that Pays - A program that monetizes the display of, and interaction with, CityGrid places is called Places that Pay.
URL - http://docs.citygridmedia.com/
Search Overview - Providing the ability to search the Facebook Graph objects with a “type” of place, and longitude/latitude, keyword search and area to find places listed as objects within Facebook.
- Database Size - Not Found
- Store / Cache Data - No
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - No
- Rating / Review -Yes
- Deals / Offers - Yes
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - One call per second
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - OAuth
- Pricing - FREE
- Check-In - Yes
- Write - Yes
- Delete - No
URL - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by latitude/longitude, and “where” using full text search query string.
- Database Size - 55 million entities in 47 countries
- Store / Cache Data - Yes
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - Yes
- Meta Data - Yes
- Rating and Review - No
- Deals - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - cross ref = 10,000 per day / crosswalk = 500 per day / read = 10,000 per day / resolve = 100 per day
- Response Format - JSON
- Authentication - Unsigned and signed requests w/ 2-legged OAuth.
- Pricing - Free
- Write - Yes
- Delete - No
Other:
- Select - What fields to include in the query.
- Places API - Resolve - Resolve is an entity resolution API that makes partial records complete, matches one entity against another, and assists in de-duping and normalizing datasets.
- Places API - Crossref - The Crossref API enables you to find the URLs for pages that mention a specific business or point of interest or vice versa.
- Places API - Restaurants - The U.S. Restaurant table contains Factual's core places attributes in addition to 43 extended attributes on 800,000+ restaurants, bars, and casual eateries including datatypes such as cuisine, ratings, hours of operations, and price.
URL - http://developer.factual.com/
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by hierarchical list of categories, longitude/latitude, “where” using search term, managed by requesting users, over time range, trending and exploration.
- Database Size - Could Not Find
- Store / Cache Data - Okay to keep caches of foursquare data as long as they are refreshed at least every 30 days.
- Attribution -Yes
- Multi-Provider - Yes
- Meta Data - Yes
- Rating and Review - Yes
- Deals - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - 5,000 requests per hour
- Response Format - JSON
- Authentication - OAuth 2.0 w/ To make a userless request, specify your consumer key's Client ID and Secret instead of an auth token in the request URL.
- Pricing - Free
- Write -Yes
- Delete - No
Other:
- Actions - You can edit, flag, mark to do, propose edit for venues in Foursquare database.
URL - https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/venues
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by
latitude/longitude, and text search based upon categories, address, city, province, postal code, country, neighborhood and text keyword.
- Database Size - 23M in US.
- Store / Cache Data - No storage. Yes to cache.
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - Yes
- Rating / Review - No
- Deals / Offers - No
- Revenue Share - Yes
- Call Limits - 5,000 calls per unique user per day
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free
- Write - Yes
- Delete - Yes
Other:
- Geotagger Methods - Returns places geotagged to a given web page.
- Content Methods - Returns geotagged content in or near a location.
URL - http://fwix.com/developer_tools/api
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by latitude/longitude, keyword matched against all fields, name of place, type of place restricted by radius. As well as pulling details for each places.
- Database Size - Could not find
- Store / Cache Data -
- Attribution - "Powered by Google" logo is displayed above or below the data
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - No
- Rating / Review - Yes
- Deals / Offers - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - 1 000 requests per 24 hour period
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free
- Check-In - Yes
- Write - Yes
- Delete - Yes
URL - http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by longitude/latitude with radius, address, bounding box or IP address.
- Database Size - Could not find
- Store / Cache Data - Yes
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - No
- Rating and Review - No
- Deals / Offers - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - Couldn’t Find
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free w/ Premium Pricing
- Check-In - No
- Write - Yes
- Delete - Yes
URL - http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/business-places-by-locationary
Search Overview - Providing a JavaScript places search that can be searched by search term, with a detail search for display by JS widget.
- Database Size - Not Found
- Store / Cache Data - No
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - No
- Rating / Review - No
- Deals / Offers - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - Not Found
- Response Format - JSON
- Authentication - None
- Pricing - Free
- Check-In - No
- Write - No
- Delete - No
URL - http://api.maps.nokia.com/places/index.html
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be searched by type, county, state, country, oceans, seas, continents, hierarchy and full text search. Also returns places detail by ID.
- Database Size - Could not find
- Store / Cache Data - No
- Attribution - Must contain the copyright notice "Copyright © Yahoo! Inc. 2008, All Rights Reserved"
- Multi-Provider IDs -No
- Meta Data - Yes
- Rating / Review - No
- Deals / Offers - No
- Revenue Share - No
- Call Limits - “Reasonable Request Volume”
- Response Format - JSON / XML
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free
- Write - Yes
- Delete - Yes
URL - http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/
Search Overview - You can search location using geo bounding box, longitude and latitude, neighborhood, address or city and filter listings by “where”, using a list of support categories. As well as pulling details for each places.
- Database Size - Could not find
- Store / Cache Data -No
- Attribution - Yes with logo
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - Yes
- Rating / Review - Overall count with 3 review excerpts
- Deals / Offers - Yes
- Revenue Share - Yes with Commission Junction
- Call Limits - 10,000 calls/day
- Response Format - JSON
- Authentication - OAuth
- Pricing - Free
- Check-In - No
- Write - No
- Delete - No
URL - http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v2/overview
Search Overview - Providing a places search that can be queried by keyword and longitude/latitude, street address, city, postal code, Neighborhood, state, points of interest or by phone number with a radius. Places details are also provided.
- Database Size - Could not find
- Store / Cache Data - No
- Attribution - Yes
- Multi-Provider IDs - No
- Meta Data - No
- Rating / Review - yes
- Deals / Offers - Yes
- Revenue Share - Yes
- Call Limits - 50,000 requests per day.
- Response Format - XML / JSON
- Authentication - Key
- Pricing - Free
- Check-In - No
- Write - No
- Delete - No
URL - http://developer.yp.com/
If you see anything missing or incorrect, let me know at @citygridapiteam.