Place field migration

The Places fields reference, id, alt_id, and scope are deprecated as of September 3, 2019, and will be turned off on June 3, 2020. We strongly recommend replacing ALL Place references retrieved prior to September 14, 2018 with new Place ID values. This guide shows you how to update these values, and provides further details about these Places fields.

id and reference fields

The id and reference fields are replaced by the place_id field. Please update your apps to use the place_id field as soon as possible. If you are still using stored values from the id or reference fields prior to September 14, 2018, replace them with place_id values.

Place Details currently supports two different ways to request details for a Place: by providing either Place IDs (place_id) or references (reference) in the request parameters. Place IDs, which are used by all Google Maps Platform APIs, are the preferred method; Place references are deprecated, and will be turned off on June 3, 2020.

Since September 12, 2018, Place references are no longer returned in Places API responses. Instead, the reference field in all Places API responses contains a Place ID. Place Details requests also accept Place IDs in the reference request parameter. Thanks to this transparent change, applications that request Place Details by references received from Places API responses are effectively using Place IDs without changes.

Retrieve a Place ID using the reference field

To replace ALL stored values that were received in the id or reference fields in Places API responses, follow these steps:

  1. Make a Place Details request using the reference field. Note that there is no way to retrieve places by their id value.
  2. Store the resulting place_id value.
  3. Replace reference with the place_id parameter for all Places API Place Details requests. Note that this will result in INVALID_REQUEST errors if the content of the place_id parameter is a Place reference instead of a Place ID value.

The following example shows a Place Details request using the reference parameter to pass a Place reference:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?reference=CmRbAAAAqDpUU1raAdsST4uXy5N4kiEovUC4sL1GaICWz1wNKQ-edLpE6JCHHvifO6-X80uWkteEVrOgLSZ4wxZsiqBbB5evCJQibJf2x6-kSfJM2vKajVRYFpaoVAMFzjbtAPaUEhBnFqm_oyw4hc5LBei1DahpGhQ1aQhiNpCPv3mfAoOmTBkxzgppZw&key=YOUR_API_KEY

When a Place ID value is available, always use the place_id parameter, as shown in this example:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?place_id=ChIJ7wV__1Q15IkRKE4kKEaobZY&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Learn more about Place IDs.

alt_id and scope fields

The alt_id and scope fields have no equivalent, as these fields were only used for the Place Add service which was turned off in July 2018. Please ensure that your Place Details requests do not specify this field.

Client libraries

If you are using any of the Client Libraries for Google Maps Web Services, please update to the latest version as soon as possible.