Factual Places is a huge resource for developers and mashup artists in need of place data. Just today the company is rolling out an updated to the Places API providing access to millions of POI points – see http://www.factual.com/topic/places. Of note, this latest Places update also includes a new restaurant places database that includes 43 attributes associate with a global database or restaurant locations. This from Factual… The global API is a very powerful tool for developers and publishers as a single, transparent gateway into 55 million POIs (points of interest) and businesses in 50 countries, with 43 deep granular attributes for segments like restaurants. In essence, it is an uber global yellow pages, all accessible via as a single API or download. No other local data provider offers this breadth and depth of data, especially for free or very low cost and allows you to download the data. The Global places data now also includes data for China and Canada.
Some of the new restaurant place attributes include the following:
- price, cuisine, rating, hours
- alcohol: bar, beer & wine, BYOB
- good for: kids, groups
- parking: onstreet,
- valet, garage, validated
- meal types: breakfast, lunch, dinner, delivery, takeout,
- catering
- meal options: vegetarian, vegan, lowfat,
- glutenfree,
- healthy, organic
- cash only
- wheelchair accessibility
- dining experience: takes reservations