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Geocoding and Autocomplete Search

The Stadia Maps geocoding and autocomplete search APIs help you convert between places and geographic coordinates. Places include points of interest (ex: Times Square), businesses, street addresses, postal codes, and more (see our list of layers). We provide a number of APIs that help you convert between places and coordinates (latitude and longitude) in both directions.

  • Geocoding

    Search for places by name or address and get their geographic coordinates, website, postal code, and more.

    Read the docs

  • Structured Geocoding

    Search for places information using structured address components rather than free-form text.

    Read the docs

  • Reverse Geocoding

    Find places (most commonly street addresses) near a specific location.

    Read the docs

  • Autocomplete Search

    Build interactive search-as-you-type user experiences, doing quick searches on incomplete input.

    Read the docs

  • Place Lookup

    Get details on a place via its GID. Useful for looking up details of related places in a response.

    Read the docs

Best Practices

Tip

Before diving into the technical documentation for each endpoint, we recommend reading this section first. This will help you and your users get the most relevant results.

Use the Correct Endpoint

Geographic Coordinates

If you have geographic coordinates and want to find out what's nearby, then the choice is easy! Use the reverse endpoint.

Interactive Search Interfaces or Partial Input

If you are creating an interactive UI where users see results as they type, use autocomplete for most queries. The notable exception to this rule is that when the user presses the enter/return key, or clicks on a search button after typing, you should probably use search.

Structured Data

If your data is already broken up into logical address chunks like postal code, city, and street address, the structured search endpoint is usually the best choice.

Complete Input as a String

If you are dealing with reasonably complete input (ex: from a database or input after the user presses enter), use the search endpoint. This is especially important for address data, as autocomplete does not interpolate missing house numbers along a street.

Specify which Layers you Need

All of our data is broken into layers, which separate data of different types. Examples of layers are venue (businesses, points of interest, etc.), address, and postalcode. Removing unneeded layers will give you more relevant results and better performance. Check out the complete list in our layers documentation.

Give the Geocoder Hints

Only dealing with US & Canadian addresses? Set boundary.country. Using the map as a viewport to bias results? Enforce a minimum map zoom if you can before setting a focus point or bounding box. You get the idea. Read the endpoint documentation for details of the available parameters. Note that in some cases it's possible to go too narrow.

Determining Result Quality

While the above have focused on how to refine your queries, the API gives a lot of hints back to you as well! Check out our documentation on determining result quality to learn about these cues.