Yahoo! Internet Location Platform

Welcome to the developer preview of the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform. The Yahoo! Internet Location Platform provides a resource for managing all geo-permanent named places on Earth. Our purpose in creating the Internet Location Platform is to provide the Yahoo! Geographic Developer Community with the vocabulary and grammar to describe the world's geography in an unequivocal, permanent, and language-neutral manner.

The Internet Location Platform is designed to facilitate spatial interoperability and geographic discovery; users can traverse the spatial hierarchy, identify the geography relevant to their users and their business, and in turn, unambiguously geotag, geotarget, and geolocate data across the Web.

Getting Started

1. Get an Application ID
2. Read the online documentation
3. Fire up a web browser or your favorite scripting language and explore the world

Using the API or Web Service

Overview

In simple terms, the Service allows you to look up the unique identifier - called the Where on Earth ID, or WOEID - for almost any named place on the Earth; it also allows you to resolve a WOEID you have received from a third party - such as Fire Eagle™ or Upcoming - to the place it represents.

The API is accessed via HTTP GET; the following examples can be cut-and-paste into a web browser to view the results (note that these links do not work properly with IE6):

Find the WOEID of a significant landmark:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('sydney%20opera%20house')

Resolve a WOEID to a place:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2507854

Find the WOEID of a specific place:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('northfield%20mn%20usa')

Obtain a range of WOEIDs that match a given place, ordered by the most likely:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('springfield');start=0;count=5

Find the parent of a given WOEID (and return a detailed record):
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/638242/parent?select=long

Return the Placename for a given WOEID in a specific language (where it exists):
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('usa')?lang=fr

To obtain the representation of a place in JSON format:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2487956?format=json

To obtain a list of geographies that neighbor a specific WOEID:
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/12795711/neighbors

Rate Limits

Currently, users of the Internet Location Platform are limited to 50k queries per day.

Terms of Use

Use of this service is subject to the Yahoo! APIs Terms of Use.