Problems with airport search with Google Places API

[Szymon J.]

Hello Everyone!

I've noticed that using only types parameter in a request it is impossible to find any airport. For example such a request:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=40.706323,-73.953467&radius=100000&types=airport&name=airport&sensor=false&key=[SECRET_KEY]

gives ZERO_RESULTS (to reproduce, an individual secret key needs to be added)

At the same time a request without "types" parameter (which is said to be required, but apparently is not) finds all places with 'Airport' in name:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=40.706323,-73.953467&radius=100000&name=airport&sensor=false&key=[SECRET_KEY]

I have to add, that I can search, without a problem places of types "food", "train_station", "museum". Is there any possibility to receive a semantically correct result of airport search?

Please help, thanks in advance

Szymon 

[Alexey Lapusta]

We have encountered same problems with "bus_station" & "subway_station", there are also zero results for "train_station" in Berlin(52.52,13.34).

We are currently looking for Google Places API as an alternative to OpenStreetMap data, and while the entertainment places subset has a much better quality - the transport subset is just empty. 

It's quite important for our application, so we would like to know, whether is it a bug, or whether Google is opening its data location-by-location, type-by-type (Is there any roadmap in that case?).

[Thor Mitchell]

I just want to make sure we don't get two different issues conflated here.

Szymon, it sounds like you are finding that the service returns features of type 'airport' but that the types=airport filter does not behave as expected? If you issue a search centered on an airport, do you get that result with a types=airport restrict? I'm curious whether types= is just failing, or whether it more strictly applies the radius restrict.

Alexey, it sounds like you are saying you can not find any results with type bus_station, subway_station, or train_station at all, regardless of the restricts applied. If you issue a search centered on a station with no restricts can you find the station? I'm curious as to whether the issue is that the station is not in the data, or whether it is not correctly categorised.

[Alexey Lapusta]

Thor,

Yes, You are right. 

1. We have same situation with airport:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=52.5549,13.2891&radius=100&sensor=false&key=...

Gives us(BTW - type duplication here?):

{
    "name": "Tegel Airport",
    "vicinity": "Flughafen Tegel, Berlin",
    "types": [ "airport", "airport", "establishment" ],
    "geometry": {
      "location": {
        "lat": 52.5548030,
        "lng": 13.2890300
      }
    },
    "icon": "http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/place_api/icons/airport-71.png",
    "reference": "CnRlAAAAh-QGOJYcbkav5ClsNEEceYDiYZ3-ytSSmt-Zb7JAnMv3ddELKjCO4Ht5Z69trVs-8w0gJvAQZCJA7FMJi9Qqlyrnpb4QCNCglKS9KlSsvteGr4q35QQZs-dSHiDpUuj5D3A14ihXaQltYM40mcFW4hIQ3p8WGQN0-xUT86zcczYkFRoUN-74qs_U99mPFsK0qbhv6YG6UG8",
    "id": "65cdb24fead2091d7849d38fa87080ee1826114a"
}

While adding "types=airport" returns ZERO_RESULTS.

2. We also do have troubles with categorization when transport places(bus,sub,train) are marked as "establishment" - i will create separate topic for that.

[Thor Mitchell]

OK. Thanks for confirming. I've logged a bug internally, and we'll take a look.

Thor.