IssueTracker

That would make Google Places calls almost useless

I must disagree with "len"; there are many applications using the Places API which perform additional filtration beyond the level offered by the "types" and "keyword" parameters of the API, and for these applications, it is necessary to be able to fetch more than 20 results per location+radius, since the filtration may eliminate most if not all of these results.

Applications which do not apply any significant filtration would be able to ignore pagination and continue using just 20 results per location.

Personally, I would like to see this feature, sooner rather than later, as a number of mashups and full-blown applications could benefit.

I agree that pagination is required or at the very least a developer configurable limit.  A limit of 20 makes the API almost useless, not the other way round.  There are many use cases where the result set would be greater than 20 locations and the application then refines using smart rules to extract the right subset.  The Google Places API cannot be responsible for such filtering as that would be application specific.  This also should be a top priority issue in my opinion.

We are restricted by our data provider licenses to enable apps to display no more than 20 places results at a time. Consequently we are not able to increase this limit at this time. If there are specific types of filter that you would like to see added so that you can always benefit from the full 20 possible results, please log these as separate feature requests.

Is there a data provider license that enables PlacesService.search to return more results to achieve a Fusion Tables look (https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/toomanymarkers/fusiontables.png)?

We're needing this for an enterprise application so if such a license exists, how does one apply to it? How much does it cost?

20 results makes it useless, and provides the will to developers create some cheap hacks, e.g., while radius < max_limit {radiuds++; search} and then remove the duplicate places.

Google introduce new parameter as page_token. check this link : https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/#PlaceSearchRequests

So it means that now we can have up to 60 results, "You can request a new page up to two times following the original query." What an improvement, lol.

As noticed above, we have added support for paging in the Places API through addition of a page token that provides a handle on the next page of results. The token becomes valid a couple of seconds after it is issued. This is to prevent all 3 pages of results being requested immediately and concatenated into a single set of 60 results, which as mentioned above is not permitted by our provider licenses.

We recommend that you use the page token to implement either true paging (eg, show 20 results at a time) or to append additional places to the bottom of your results once a user scrolls to the end.

A total of 60 results is not adequate for my apps, and still makes it impossible for me to use the Places API in my projects.

I love the Places API, but I had to write a scraping algorithm to get the places information that I needed for my web projects.  I would prefer to use the API directly, but unless there is a more suitable number of pages (more like 10 pages worth), then I cannot use this API.  I think most other developers would agree with me...?

It doesn't make sense to release an API that locks many developers out of its usefulness.  Why so protective of these data, if you don't mind a question?

I just read through the previous comments, and apologize for not doing so before posting.  It seems like this is a data provider/license issue, not a google issue.  Is that correct, thor?

Chris

Yes, it's in large part a licensing issue. But it's also because the goal of the Places API is not to facilitate scraping or aggregation of Google Places data in the way you describe. Any application that does so is almost certainly not compliant with the Google Maps or Google Maps API Terms of Service, and is likely to be blocked from using the API or other Google services at any time.

The Places API is intended to allow apps to offer their users a way to discover of identify Places nearby. There is a practical limit to the number of search results that a user will scan through and consider. I don't believe it's necessary to offer users 200 results, and I suspect that doing so would only serve to increase development of applications that scrape Google Places data, without adding significant benefit or utility to the types of apps the API is intended to serve, and that we wish to encourage.

Thor, the scraping algorithm that I incorporated into my projects is based on Selenium, not on any Google API, which should not breach any Google agreement of which I am aware, since once the page is loaded the data is public.

The apps I am developing require users to see several hundred listings because only a few of those listings are relevant to the user.  Just like any-old Google Maps search, sometimes the things they want are not on page 1.  

It sounds like what you are saying is that any respectable app should not need more than 60 results.  To that, I would reply, "Then why does a normal Google Maps search bring up dozens of pages of results?"  Sometimes the things my users want to see are not on page 3 or 4 or even 5, just like your users.  We all have the same users, after all.

Respectfully,

Chris

The technology used to scrape does not impact whether the usage is compliant with the terms. The Maps Terms state "Unless you have received prior written authorization from Google (or, as applicable, from the provider of particular Content), you must not: (d) use the Products in a manner that gives you or any other person access to mass downloads or bulk feeds of any Content, including but not limited to numerical latitude or longitude coordinates, imagery, and visible map data;". So it's unlikely that your usage is Terms compliant.

With regards to the number of results, it's a tradeoff between empowering developers to write useful apps and not making it trivially easy to scrape large quantities of Google content. We have hard data on how many users access results on higher pages, and even the number who go beyond the first 20 results on Google Maps is tiny. Once you get a lot higher than that the likelihood that this is legitimate end user browsing drops off to almost zero, while the likelihood that this is automated scraping increases dramatically.

So we have to make a judgement call as to when the risk of offering more results exceeds the benefit to developers and users. We've chosen to raise the bar from 20 to 60 because we have seen enough legitimate demand for more than 20 to justify the risk, but I don't expect us to increase this any further in the near future.

Thor,

I apologize if I am not terms compliant.  I will double check the terms today as "The Product" should be defined as Google Places API, not the publicly available maps data.  I'll talk to my lawyers, but thank you very much for the heads up.  I will promptly change my algorithm to scrape data from other sites or use YQL, instead.

The information you presented here has been very useful.  For my particular needs, I need to be able to see if the result has an address, a phone number and a URL, which many Places results are missing.  That means that only a subset (less than 60) of the total results work for my needs.  Again, that means that the actual number of usable results I can get from Google Places API is quite small.

60 Results would be adequate for my needs if I could filter out results that are missing these bits of information.  After combing through the API again, I found no way to set a "hasURL" flag, or similar, for example.

If that is not the intended usage of the Places API, then I understand and will continue to use other solutions.  I did not mean to come off as confrontational, and hope that my feedback can be used to better the product.

Best,

Chris

Hi Thor,

We need to use 2 google APIs, Google Places API and Google Geocoding APIs.

Do we need to buy the Google Maps API for Business to use just these two products ? Or we can just get business licenses for these two APIs only ?

Thanks

Can we simply collect some data, e.g., Physician addresses, phone # & hours, and display that on our website? No associated map and 100% publicly available.

The terms of use are not very clear to us.
Can someone help us understand
1) We want establishments to register for our service.
2) Once they select the place (based on google places) and register for our service we want to store the place name,geo location and phone Number in our database.
Is this allowed by google places API
If not is there a paid service that google offers.
Ours is a public site that will mostl likely be a paid service (atleast parts of it)

Please if there is any paid Places API service it will be good we can purchase it.