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There are geocoder differences between the Google Maps Geocoding API and the Google Maps geocoder.

Is there a way to access the Google Maps geocoder rather than that of the Geocoding API?

What prompts me to ask this is the fact that the following query:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=Department%20of%20Homeland%20Security

yields the "Office of Homeland Security/Civil Defense, Aspinall Ave, Hagåtña, 96910, Guam."

However, searching for "Department of Homeland Security" on Google Maps yielded this instead, which is a better (for our use case) result than the one from the query to maps.googleapis.com.

AST
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The Google Maps Geocoding API is for translating postal addresses into geographic coordinates. "Department of Homeland Security" is not an address, it is at best a place. To geolocate places, use the Google Maps Places API (but even that won't locate something as broad as "Department of Homeland Security")

geocodezip
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  • Okay. Google Maps yields a better search result than the Geocoding API. Can you address the specific question above of "can we access the Google Maps place locator"? – AST Jan 20 '16 at 18:29
  • You can only access Google's data through their APIs. The [Google Maps Places API](https://developers.google.com/places/web-service/), is the API for retrieving place data from their place database. – geocodezip Jan 20 '16 at 18:38