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This seems like a reasonable place to ask this: Is there an alternative available to Google Places Text Search? E.g., I provide a query that's something like "h
by arnath 7y ago
This seems like a reasonable place to ask this: Is there an alternative available to Google Places Text Search? E.g., I provide a query that's something like "hardware stores" and a location and I get back a list of hardware stores within the location?
As far as I can tell, the geocoding APIs from stuff like MapBox or Pelias aren't intended for this use case (more like finding a specific hardware store).
- tuukkah 7y agoAt least Nominatim can answer such queries, for example: https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=hardware+stores+in+san+francisco https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=hardware+st... I don't think it would be difficult to implement in Pelias either considering that it already has the necessary data and can search for results closest to a given point or within an area.
- NetToolKit 7y agoWe at NetToolKit have implemented arnath's requested functionality using OpenStreetMap data (demo available at https://www.nettoolkit.com/geo/autocomplete https://www.nettoolkit.com/geo/autocomplete). The problem that we have found is that while some categories have great coverage (e.g. restaurants in Portland), many categories do not (e.g. gas stations). Assembling this data is expensive, and hence either the data is available via well-capitalized players (e.g. Facebook Places Search: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/web/search/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/web/search/) and/or are expensive to use (e.g. Foursquare).
- leoedin 7y agoI think Foursquare offer pretty much exactly that. They pivoted a while ago to focus on B2B location API stuff.
- distances 7y agoDidn't they just recently pivot to doing place reviews instead of check-ins?