Google Place Autocomplete API showing invalid address

Question

We are currently trying the Google places autocomplete api, but it seems as though Google places autocomplete api also returns invalid (non existent) addresses in the search result.

We want to receive only valid / actual addresses when the user types in the address autocomplete, is there a way to do it?

I searched the api docs but couldn't find anything much helpful. There is a google places validation api but it only validates after given a single address, but we want to show only valid/actual addresses on search autocomplete and also don't want to call validation api for each of the search result items.

Went through official doc and also experimented several stackoverflow answers but those didn't match our requirements.

SO ref-1

Answer 1

This is Working as Intended as of now

I tried reproducing the Autocomplete request using this:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/autocomplete/json?input=332%20Kennedy%20drive,%20Torrington,%20CT&types=address&key=API_KEY

And the results returned has a long Place ID.

According to the Places API documentation:

"Place IDs uniquely identify a place in the Google Places database and on Google Maps."

The documentation also says that the API may return a different place ID in the response. These place ID types include:

• Street addresses that do not exist in Google Maps as precise addresses, but are inferred from a range of addresses.
• Segments of a long route, where the request also specifies a city or locality.
• Intersections.
• Places with an address component of type subpremise.

These IDs often take the form of a long string.

This explains why the API still returned a street address for the input =332 Kennedy drive, Torrington, CT using types=address. The use case of autocomplete is to help the users obtain the closest result even if they are requesting an ambiguous query. So the Autocomplete always tries to return the closest result to their input and types. In your case, it returned a street addresses that do not exist in Google Maps as precise addresses, but are inferred from a range of addresses.

There's a public bug on the issue tracker that is somehow related to this. On the comment #5, it says that:

Suggestions are sometimes created for addresses that may not exist, if there are chances that they do. Retrieving details for such suggestions may result in the suggested address, if it actually exists or can be synthesized from existing data. Otherwise, the result may be a different address, one that actually exists.

Possible workaround

One thing you can do is to use the validation API.

But since you mentioned that you don't want to use it, I tried the Autocomplete request using this:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/autocomplete/json?input=332%20Kennedy%20drive,%20Torrington,%20CT&types=establishment&key=API_KEY

I just changed the types=address to types=establishment and it seems to return legit addresses. I'm not sure if this would fit on your use case, so you can just comment down if it does not.

And if it does not, I found a similar public bug on the issue tracker which says that similar issues like these are currently being worked on by the Google engineers internally. So what I would advise you to do wait for on update from this public bug.

There's no definite timeline on how long this will be fixed, but you can star it to be notified whenever there's an update.

Hope this helps!

== UPDATE ==

I tried playing around with the types and got to a point where I tried putting an array of types from this table. I tried this:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/autocomplete/json?input=332%20Kennedy%20drive,%20Torrington,%20CT&types=street_address|street_number|premise&key=API_KEY

and it did return some real addresses. I changed the types=address to types=street_address|street_number|premise. You could try it out yourself and play around with the types and see if it works for your use case.

for more information about types, here's a link to the documentation.