General Information

  • Subscribers may search for world wide regions, countries, administrative areas, and locations.

  • There are three types of locations that can be queried: cities, postal codes, and points of interest.

  • If the type is specified in the url, the result will only return that type.

  • Locations of any type may be retrieved using the unique location key as provided by the Locations API.

  • A location key for a particular location can be obtained from the response of a text search, autocomplete city search,  or geoposition search.

  • Use geoposition searching in order to search for a location via latitude and longitude coordinates. GeoLookups should be performed using the WGS-84 coordinate system.

  • Data is available in more than 100 languages and dialects.

  • By default, specific details of the location such as designated market area, station code, population, etc. are not returned.  Please pass in "details=true" in order to see these location details. 

Cities

  • More than 3.5 million searchable locations, including 1.7 million VerifiedLocations.

  • Many cities have alternate names, or aliases, defined to provide flexibility when searching for a particular location.  Aliases are used to account for common alternate spellings (Saint Louis, St. Louis, St Louis), historical names (Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon), and accepted alternate names (Derry, Londonderry).

  • Only verified locations will be used in GeoPosition and AutoComplete searches.

  • Only verified locations will be supported for localizations (translations).

  • City searches will always be returned in order of rank, with the most important cities listed at the top.

Postal Codes

  • Verified postal code searching is available for the following countries, with the root level of the code in red:

    • Canada - Follows the format A0A 0A0. All lookups are based on the Forward Sortation Areas, or FSA, part of the postal code.

    • Germany - Follows the format 00000. Many of the postal code names are available in German as well as English.

    • United Kingdom - Follows the format A0 0AA, A00 0AA, AA0 0AA, AA00 0AA, A0A 0AA, or AA0A 0AA. All lookups are based on the Postcode Sector. The UK Postal Code system also includes support for the following areas: Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey.

    • United States - Follows the format 00000. The US Postal Code system also includes support for the following areas: American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.

  • Unverified postal code searching is available for the following countries: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. A list of the formats for each of these postal codes is available here.

  • One postal code can point to many locations; Use Location Key to get back to a specific postal code.

  • In many cases, the name for a particular postal code is derived from the location of the post office responsible for that postal code. These names often differ from the cities located in that same area.

  • Since postal codes can cover a large area, derived data is mapped based on what best represents the whole area of the postal code.

Points of Interest

  • Abbreviated as POI, a Point of Interest is frequently used to refer to business location, tourist location, or other well know site. Common examples of POIs available are Airports, Stadiums, and Parks.

  • More than 50,000 searchable Points of Interest.

  • More than 12,000 worldwide airports, including the ability to search by airport codes (FAA, ICAO, IATA codes supported).

  • Primarily focused on the US, with plans to expand to other countries in the near future, including support for localized names.

  • Points of Interest are not returned in Geoposition (lat/lon) searches.

Time Zone Information

  • Time zone information is returned with location information for all forecast points in the location api.