Just posted the following list of local search api’s on SearchEngineLand.  I am going to be maintaining the list here and will be updating it from time to time.

Alcatel Lucent Open API Service Tap into network data to pinpoint a user’s location via their mobile device, enable geotargeting of ads & offers and finding friends nearby.

CityGrid (CitySearch) 15M+ business profile listings. 3M+ user & editorial reviews. 500K+ local advertisters (in other words they will pay you to use this API!).

Earthmine 3D street level imagery to make your maps and local pages look really cool.

Foursquare Become the mayor of your own money-making application. Create strange new ways to check in at places at all over the globe.

GoWalla Like Foursquare’s but with a twist. I particularly like the LunchVote feature that helps you decided where to eat for lunch.

Hoovers Access 65 million company records and 85 million people records. That’s an insane amount of data. Includes historical financial performance, executive contact information and a lot of other stuff to make a sweet local business directory.

Merchant Circle Get access to Merchant Circle’s reviews, business descriptions, coupons, etc.  Here’s their Google Groups page for the API.

Outside.in Easily integrate hyperlocal news into your application.

Praized Create a real-time local recommendations service.  This one is awesome.

TownMe Find and share local info. Gives a set of points of interest close to a lat/lon. These guys are creating an open platform for local.

Trulia Get geolocation data like lat/lon on neighborhoods, cities, counties, states and zip codes. Also provides a lot of real estate related data like the average price of a homes listed on Trulia.

Twitter/MixerLabs Do I really need to provide more info on this one?

Yahoo! Local Search for businesses near a specified location and return lat/lon and Yahoo! user ratings of the business.

Yelp API Retrieve business review & rating info, neighborhood name and pictures for a particular business or businesses in a particular geographic region or location.

WhitePages.com Allows you to add Whitepages’ people search to your site.

Zvents Restaurant and event venue listings, local events & performers. Zvents users and tags.

If you have any other great local-related APIs please add them to the comments below.

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10 Response Comments

  • Rob  February 22, 2010 at 11:19 am

    Good list Andrew. Don’t forget about Seb and the guys at PraizedMedia.

  • Jacob Stoops  February 22, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    Interesting. Wonder how people may try to leverage these API’s to turn them around as applications?

  • Mark Dayley  February 24, 2010 at 10:35 am

    Great List of API’s Andrew.
    You do a great job of putting out current and valuable data to the SEO world.

  • Jack Stevens  February 24, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Fantastic list. I have client who is going to want to kiss you like crazy for this API list. I’ll make sure they know I got it from you.

    Thanks again!
    Jack

  • Andrew Shotland  February 24, 2010 at 10:15 pm

    Thanks Mark. Jack, flowers and candy might be more appreciated.

  • Craig Mullins  February 27, 2010 at 12:21 am

    Hmmm, This looks fun!

  • Amy Rae  March 2, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    We just opened our API of 1.3 million Canadian business listings, photos, videos, lat/longs! I’m pretty excited about the announcement we’re also starting a contest today http://winmoney.canpages.ca/ where the grand prize is $5,000 and 3 runner up winners will receive $1,000 each.

    Developers can develop on iphone, android, blackberry or web.

    Amy

  • dineplace  April 1, 2010 at 3:48 am

    Interesting. Wonder how people may try to leverage these API’s to turn them around as applications?

  • Richard Haussmann  August 18, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    These are great.Each one has slightly different JSON/XML responses for essentially the same information. Does anyone know of a standard (flexible) XML format for directory/Local information?

  • Virgilio  December 30, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    I would recommend you add a little bit of more information about T&Cs of each of these APIs, mostly of them has certain limitations like competitor information not allowed or number of transactions, I also think it is time to aupdate the list. I´m open to support you on this update work if you need, just write me.