This document contains answers to frequently asked questions about the Places API. If you are unable to find the answer to your question here, you may find some of the following pages helpful.
The Places API also has a vibrant developer community. If you have questions about your code, we recommend that you post your question to the community. More information about asking questions can be found in the Support page.
Search for places
Why are some places not returned when I filter by type?
It's possible that the place you are looking for has not yet been categorized.
All places are categorized as the generic type "establishment" until Google
has enough data about a place to categorize it as one of the supported place
types.
As a workaround you can pass the place type to the keyword parameter. The
keyword parameter is matched to: name, type, address, and customer reviews.
If you would like to add the category type to a place listing yourself,
submit a place edit. Once the edit has been
approved and published it will appear using the correct type filtering.
Why are some nearby places not returned?
By default, the Places API sorts results by prominence within
the supplied radius. A Nearby Search request can return up to
60 results, split across three pages. If a place ranks 22nd in prominence, it
will appear on the second page of results which you can access through
paging.
If a placeranks greater than 60th in prominence it won't be included in the
search result, even if it is closer to the center of your search.
You can sort your results by distance instead of prominence by setting the
rankby parameter in your query to distance and omitting the radius
parameter. Relevance will be ignored and places will be returned in order of
distance from location.
If you are filtering your request by type, some results may be filtered out of the response. For more information, see the FAQ entry: Why are some places not returned when I filter by type?.
Why do I receive at most two results when filtering by some types?
The Places API is designed to return a list of nearby
establishments (anything from the
first table
in the supported place types) and up to two location (anything from the
second table
of supported place types) results to to help identify the area you are
performing a Nearby Search request for.
Filtering your Nearby Search request by a location type, like
locality or political, will filter out the establishment results.
Place data
How can I add or edit places?
If you are the owner of a business, you can add, verify and manage your business listings on Google Maps using Business Profile.
If you don't own the place, you can still suggest changes.
Troubleshooting
Why do I keep receiving "status": "REQUEST_DENIED"?
The "status": "REQUEST_DENIED" is returned by the Places API
when:
- You have not activated the Places API in the Google Cloud console.
- The
keyparameter is missing from your request. - The
keyparameter does not match the your API key in the Google Cloud console. - Your API key has not been correctly set up in the Google Cloud console:
- If you are using a browser-restricted API key, check that your allowed referer(s) are correct.
- If you are using a server-restricted API key, check that your allowed IP(s) are correct.
- API keys with Android or iOS restrictions are not supported. Use a generic (unrestricted) API key, or a key with browser or server restrictions.
- The request was not sent as an
HTTPSrequest,HTTPSis required for all Places API requests. - The incorrect
HTTP methodwas used to send the request.