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Add flexible search and Google reviews to your local apps with the Google Places API

We launched the Google Places API at Google I/O last year to enable developers to search more than 95 million places, such as businesses and landmarks, around the world. We have continued to enhance the API since then, adding a number of features requested by developers such as keyword search, rank by distance, and support for Events. At Google I/O this year we continued to respond to your feedback, with the launch of Google Reviews, Text Search, Opening Hours, and Paging.



Google Reviews

By far the most popular request from developers since the day we launched has been access to the Google Reviews offered on Google+ Local. We’re therefore delighted to announce that the top 5 Google Reviews for a Place are now included in the response to a Place Details request. Each review is accompanied by additional information such as the scores given by the author, author details, and the date that the review was submitted.

Text Search

Today we are introducing Text Search, a whole new way of searching that broadens the scope of the Places API to any device that can accept text input, be it from a keyboard or from voice recognition.



Text Search brings the flexible capabilities of the Google Maps search field to your application. Rather than requiring the user’s location to search around, Text Search interprets free text queries that can include both what the user is searching for, and where they are searching for it. For example, you can submit a search for “Pizza in New York”, or “Sushi near Sydney”. You can also bias queries to a particular area, so that even queries with no address component can be correctly interpreted.

Opening Hours

Another popular request from developers has been access to the opening hours for businesses. The Place API now returns the 7 day opening hours for a Place in the Place Details results where available. Place Search results also now include a property that indicates if a Place for which opening hours are available is currently open.

Paging

Today we are also introducing support for paging, which increases the number of search results that can be retrieved to 60. Applications can now request two additional sets of 20 results after the initial request has been made.

You can try these new features with the below demo. Enter a search query to see 20 matching results, with more loaded when you scroll to the end of the list. Click on a result to see the reviews for that place under the map, and the opening hours for today in the InfoWindow on the map.







To accompany these launches we’re also pleased to announce a new dedicated home page for the Places API at developers.google.com/places. In addition to the Places API web service, all of the above new features are also available in the places library of the JavaScript Maps API v3.



If you want to know more about how your application can benefit from the power of the Google Places API join our developer community on Stack Overflow. We look forward to seeing the innovative new apps that these great new Places API features inspire you to develop.



Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Places API

Another great year for App Engine at Google I/O

App Engine engineers talk to developers in the cloud platform sandbox at Google I/O

The dust has settled on another fantastic Google I/O. The skydiving demos and delicious jelly beans were great, but we had the most fun talking to developers and hearing about their experiences using Google’s technology. Here are the highlights of the App Engine talks from this year.

• In our overview session, Peter Magnusson and Greg D’Alesandre introduced many of our new features and announced that we have attained 7.5 billion hits per day and are running more than 1 million active applications.


• We announced Google Compute Engine and Alon Levi and Adam Eijdenberg showed how to use App Engine to orchestrate compute instances.


• Cloud SQL began taking open signups and we witnessed an epic battle of the backends in our SQL vs NoSQL session, with Alfred Fuller representing the Datastore and Ken Ashcraft representing Cloud SQL.


• We announced Google Cloud Endpoints and hosted a codelab to give developers early access to our trusted tester program.


• Brian Quinlan covered the finer points of the Python 2.7 runtime.


• And last but not least, Marzia Niccolai, Greg Darke and Troy Trimble gave some great tips for optimizing App Engine applications.

We’ll be taking a short break from our regularly scheduled release cycle in July, but we’ll get back on our usual drumbeat of monthly releases in August.


- Posted by the Google App Engine Team

Fab Friday went to I/O

Wow, what an amazing week at Google I/O. First and foremost, I really enjoyed meeting many of you, the developers who continue to build great maps, who push the boundaries of what is possible, and who push us to grow and improve our mapping APIs. I am always pleased and amazed at the work you do.



We’re all heading home, tired from the week. We’ll do a more complete wrap-up next week, but I wanted to give you a brief taste before then.



We had a LOT of Google Maps going on this year, with ten sessions on the Google Maps track, the Maps for Good session on the Tech Talk track, and two codelabs. Too many to name them all here, but I wanted to highlight a few that you might have missed. I want to thank all the speakers, the organizers, and the TAs in our codelabs as well.



We also had a bunch of new features launch, including Symbols and Heatmaps for data visualization, a number of enhancements to Styled Maps, and the heavily requested addition of public transit to the Maps API.



The video for every session is being posted to the Google Developer Channel on YouTube, and embedded in the session page on the Google I/O site. All sessions for day one are now available, with the remainder to be added over the next few days.



Since it’s my post, I’ll end with Enterprise Geospatial in the Cloud with myself and Sean Maday. We published our slides this morning.







On a personal note, I’ll be taking the month of July off. I’ll miss you all while I’m enjoying sunny Italy. Have a great summer!



Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations team

AdWords Location Targets will start PHASING_OUT

Location criteria, first introduced in v201109, are undergoing some changes for the v201206 release. This blog post explains these changes and what they mean for your software.

PHASING_OUT obsolete Location criteria

The Location criteria object has a new field, targetingStatus, which can be one of ACTIVE, OBSOLETE and PHASING_OUT.

• ACTIVE Locations can be targeted as normal.


• OBSOLETE Location targets have been retired and cannot be targeted.


• PHASING_OUT Locations will shortly become obsolete and should not be targeted.

Locations can be phased out for a number of reasons: the location may be re-structured into smaller (or larger areas), geo-political changes, etc. The AdWords UI reflects these changes and now the AdWords API will make these changes visible to developers. We will publish a blog post 4 weeks in advance of a location moving to PHASING_OUT.

What this means for your software

As of the launch of v201206, Location criteria that are PHASING_OUT will still be accepted. Starting 4 weeks later (week of 7/23), adding these targets will cause a CriterionError.Reason.CANNOT_TARGET_CRITERION error message. Please make sure before adding a Location target that it is ACTIVE. Choose a different target if it is labeled OBSOLETE or PHASING_OUT.

Soon to PHASE_OUT

Check out this help center article to learn which specific locations will be removed after July 23rd. The article also provides more detail about the phasing-out process in general.



In addition, we will introduce two new separate targets, one for Serbia and one for Montenegro in the coming weeks. These new targets will replace the current single Serbia Montenegro target, and the targeting status of Serbia Montenegro will change to PHASING_OUT sometime after July 27th.



We have documented this new status field in our downloadable documentation. The LocationCriterionService and CampaignCriterionService will also populate this field. Please update your code to check this field or your application may break.



If you have any questions, please post on the forum or attend one of the AdWords API Office Hours Hangouts.



 - Kevin Winter, AdWords API Team

Data At Your Fingertips: Announcing The Google Analytics App For Android

We are pleased to announce the launch of Google Analytics App for Android phones!

With the Google Analytics App, you can access the same accounts and profiles you see when you open Analytics from a desktop browser, but you’ll see reports that are optimized for your phone. 

Swipe through these reports to see the essential data about your websites and apps anywhere, anytime:

• Real-Time: See the number of visitors you currently have and a list of the pages (for websites) or screens (for apps) that are currently popular.


• Dashboard: Monitor the KPIs and user metrics you care about the most. By default, you’ll see your Daily Unique Visitors and your Goal Conversion Rate, but you can customize the dashboard to change which reports, metrics, or segments you see.  


• Automatic and Customized Alerts: Google Analytics detects statistical anomalies in your data and can send you an alert when something unusual happens. See either automatic alerts, or customize your settings to send alerts based on your own benchmarks. 

Screenshot: The Realtime Report

Screenshot: The Dashboard

Visit Google Play to download and install the app to keep up with your data anytime, anywhere.

Peng Li, on behalf of the GA Mobile App team

AdWords API v201206 launch - including new Flexible reach targeting settings on the Google Display Network

We’re pleased to announce the launch of AdWords API v201206, which includes new ad group level Flexible reach targeting settings on the Google Display Network, a new query language to retrieve items more flexibly, new report types, and changes to ad scheduling and other services. Below we’ve highlighted some of the new features available to all users. A complete list of changes is available in the release notes.




v201206 highlights:

• CampaignService and AdGroupService changes for the adgroup override/restrict targeting setting migration - The new Flexible reach setting in AdWords enables advertisers to fine-tune where ads show by choosing settings at the ad group level instead of the campaign level. Once you choose Flexible reach for the campaign, you cannot revert back to your previous setting, and will manage targets and bids at the individual ad group level. 


• New services for obtaining customer information - we’re introducing the new ManagedCustomerService and CustomerService in v201206, v201109_1 and v201109. These services will be replacing ServicedAccountService and CreateAccountService, starting with v201206. 


• New reports - We’re introducing a new CLICK_PERFORMANCE_REPORT which provides information on each click, as well as REACH_FREQUENCY reports at the Account, AdGroup and Campaign levels. 


• AWQL - The AdWords Query Language providing SQL-like syntax queries is now available on some services including Ad Hoc Reporting. 


• Other changes - AdSchedule targeting has been moved to CampaignCriterionService. The CampaignTargetService is now sunset. 

With the release of v201206, the following versions and services will be deprecated:

• v13 AccountService - We will sunset this version and service on August 20, 2012 


• v201109 and v201109_1 - We will sunset these versions on October 26, 2012 

As with every new version of the AdWords API, we encourage you to review the resources in the release notes. If you have any questions please post on the forum or attend one of the AdWords API Office Hours Hangouts.



- The AdWords API Team