Place Search API

What is the Place Search API?

MapQuest’s Place Search API provides a simple interface for performing spatial searches on hosted and remote data.

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What it can do for you

Find All the Things

Answer user questions such as "Which coffee shops are within a 5-minute drive from my house?"

Usher in Customers

With POI superiority, help your customers find your exact retail location, and not the coffee shop down the street. Coupled with our Directions API, get them from Door A to Door B.

Specificity

Search your own data or search millions of POIs from the MapQuest database.

Divide and Conquer

Divvy up your sales territory or search and display your customer’s location on a map. And use additional search types: custom polygon and line (corridor).

Key Features

Search by Travel Time or Distance

Search results default to "as the crow flies," but can also be calculated in terms of walking or driving minutes, or driving miles or kilometers. Setting a parameter shows only locations accessible within the specified time or distance.

Shapes and Sizes

Place Search accepts a circle or a rectangle as a constraint, but it will also perform searches without specified constraints.

Filter Search Results

When searching hosted data, results can be further filtered by providing a SQL "where" clause with the API request. Example: searching restaurants that include "amex" field, to find restaurants which accept American Express.

Specify Field Names

With more than 35 data fields to choose from, specify to your heart’s desire: front door, storefront line, building center, oh my!

Results Page

You don't have to receive all of your results at once – we can break results into pages to temporarily store them in memory, and results can also be sorted by importance and relevance.

Mixed Data Sources

Search multiple data sources at once, including data sources that aren't within the MapQuest dataset. Search up to 50 max results across HostedData tables and RemoteData tables simultaneously.

How it Looks

{
  "searchResults": [
    {
      "resultNumber": 1,
      "distance": 0,
      "sourceName": "mqap.ntpois",
      "name": "Cholon",
      "shapePoints": [
        39.750307,
        -104.999472
      ],
      "distanceUnit": "m",
      "key": "6318dd07-b366-4d80-b82a-88b5b456b929",
      "fields": {
        "phone": "+(1)-(720)-5368609",
        "side_of_street": "N",
        "group_sic_code": "581208",
        "state": "CO",
        "lng": -104.999472,
        "group_sic_code_name": "(All) Restaurants",
        "city": "Denver",
        "country": "US",
        "group_sic_code_name_ext": "(All) Restaurants",
        "id": "270729839",
        "mqap_geography": {
          "latLng": {
            "lng": -104.999472,
            "lat": 39.750307
          }
        },
        "address": "1555 Blake St",
        "postal_code": "80202",
        "name": "Cholon",
        "mqap_id": "6318dd07-b366-4d80-b82a-88b5b456b929",
        "group_sic_code_ext": "581208",
        "disp_lat": 39.750307,
        "lat": 39.750307,
        "disp_lng": -104.999472
      }
    },
    {
      "resultNumber": 2,
      "distance": 0,
      "sourceName": "mqap.ntpois",
      "name": "Sugar Cube Building",
      "shapePoints": [
        39.750307,
        -104.999472
      ],
      "distanceUnit": "m",
      "key": "29202c14-9a24-4d5f-9075-ae489e8af441",
      "fields": {
        "phone": "+(1)-(720)-9040928",
        "side_of_street": "N",
        "group_sic_code": "653118",
        "state": "CO",
        "lng": -104.999472,
        "group_sic_code_name": "Real Estate Agents",
        "city": "Denver",
        "country": "US",
        "group_sic_code_name_ext": "Real Estate Agents",
        "id": "345964805",
        "mqap_geography": {
          "latLng": {
            "lng": -104.999472,
            "lat": 39.750307
          }
        },
        "address": "1555 Blake St",
        "postal_code": "80202",
        "name": "Sugar Cube Building",
        "mqap_id": "29202c14-9a24-4d5f-9075-ae489e8af441",
        "group_sic_code_ext": "653118",
        "disp_lat": 39.750307,
        "lat": 39.750307,
        "disp_lng": -104.999472
      }
    },
    {
      "resultNumber": 3,
      "distance": 0,
      "sourceName": "mqap.ntpois",
      "name": "Dealer Group",
      "shapePoints": [
        39.750307,
        -104.999472
      ],
      "distanceUnit": "m",
      "key": "4c6967df-f843-4da8-acc6-8fcde91da82d",
      "fields": {
        "phone": "+(1)-(720)-9040440",
        "side_of_street": "N",
        "group_sic_code": "551102",
        "state": "CO",
        "lng": -104.999472,
        "group_sic_code_name": "(All) Auto Dealers",
        "city": "Denver",
        "country": "US",
        "group_sic_code_name_ext": "(All) Auto Dealers",
        "id": "279569749",
        "mqap_geography": {
          "latLng": {
            "lng": -104.999472,
            "lat": 39.750307
          }
        },
        "address": "1555 Blake St",
        "postal_code": "80202",
        "name": "Dealer Group",
        "mqap_id": "4c6967df-f843-4da8-acc6-8fcde91da82d",
        "group_sic_code_ext": "551102",
        "disp_lat": 39.750307,
        "lat": 39.750307,
        "disp_lng": -104.999472
      }
    },
    {
      "resultNumber": 4,
      "distance": 0,
      "sourceName": "mqap.ntpois",
      "name": "Urban Villages",
      "shapePoints": [
        39.750307,
        -104.999472
      ],
      "distanceUnit": "m",
      "key": "a463baab-a449-40ed-adcb-62dd63cc9b30",
      "fields": {
        "phone": "+(1)-(720)-9040928",
        "side_of_street": "N",
        "group_sic_code": "152130",
        "state": "CO",
        "lng": -104.999472,
        "group_sic_code_name": "Construction Building Contractors",
        "city": "Denver",
        "country": "US",
        "group_sic_code_name_ext": "Construction Building Contractors",
        "id": "279165586",
        "mqap_geography": {
          "latLng": {
            "lng": -104.999472,
            "lat": 39.750307
          }
        },
        "address": "1555 Blake St",
        "postal_code": "80202",
        "name": "Urban Villages",
        "mqap_id": "a463baab-a449-40ed-adcb-62dd63cc9b30",
        "group_sic_code_ext": "152130",
        "disp_lat": 39.750307,
        "lat": 39.750307,
        "disp_lng": -104.999472
      }
    }
  ],
  "origin": {
    "latLng": {
      "lng": -104.999472,
      "lat": 39.750307
    },
    "adminArea4": "",
    "adminArea5Type": "City",
    "adminArea4Type": "County",
    "adminArea5": "",
    "street": "",
    "adminArea1": "",
    "adminArea3": "",
    "type": "s",
    "displayLatLng": {
      "lng": -104.999472,
      "lat": 39.750307
    },
    "linkId": 0,
    "postalCode": "",
    "sideOfStreet": "N",
    "dragPoint": false,
    "adminArea1Type": "Country",
    "geocodeQuality": "LATLNG",
    "geocodeQualityCode": "XXXXX",
    "adminArea3Type": "State"
  },
  "resultsCount": 4,
  "hostedData": [
    {
      "tableName": "mqap.ntpois",
      "extraCriteria": "",
      "columnNames": []
    }
  ],
  "totalPages": 1,
  "info": {
    "statusCode": 0,
    "copyright": {
      "text": "© 2017 MapQuest, Inc.",
      "imageUrl": "http://api.mqcdn.com/res/mqlogo.gif",
      "imageAltText": "© 2017 MapQuest, Inc."
    },
    "messages": []
  },
  "options": {
    "kmlStyleUrl": "http://www.search.mapquestapi.com/kml-default.kml",
    "shapeFormat": "raw",
    "ambiguities": true,
    "pageSize": 4,
    "radius": 20,
    "currentPage": 1,
    "units": "m",
    "maxMatches": 4
  }
}

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