Difference between Search API options

REST APIs
#1

I want to search for restaurants in a given city. Which one of the Search API options is best for this?

  • Fuzzy Search
  • Points of Interest Search
  • Category Search
  • Nearby Search

I’m assuming Nearby Search, but can someone explain the difference between all of these?

Also, what is the difference between Geocode and Structured Geocode?

Thank you.

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#2

More or less they are described here:


Choosing one depends on you case.
If you wish to make a restriction in your app to search only for restaurants then I would use Category Search.
If your app allows to type place name or address then the Fuzzy search is a better option.
Points of Interest Search is something like a Fuzzy search witch idxSet=POI.
With Nearby Search you get a list of all POIs near the specified location and you can’t filter them.

And the last question - Structured geocode just requires to put particular address parts in specific fields.

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#3

Thank you.

But the Nearby Search has a “[categorySet]” optional parameter to filter by category. So how then would that be different from Category Search?

#4

My bad. In Nearby search you don’t provide a “query”.

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#5

Oh I see.

So in my case of wanting to look for restaurants in a city, I should use Nearby Search, right? (The only thing the user types in is the city name, they don’t type in the word “restaurants”.)

#6

I would use Geocode to get lat/lon of a city and then use them with Nearby search.
If you need this list to be strict (only restaurants from this city) then you could consider using Geometry Search.

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#7

Ya sorry, that’s what I meant.

Thank you.