A WOEID (Where On Earth IDentifier) is a unique 32-bit reference identifier, originally defined by GeoPlanet and now assigned by Yahoo!, that identifies any feature on Earth.[1] In 2009, Yahoo! released GeoPlanet's WOEID data to the public,[2] with the last release on 1 June 2012, after which Yahoo! decided to cease making the data downloadable until they "determine a better way to surface the data as a part of the service".[3]

WOEIDs are used by a number of other projects, including Flickr,[4] OpenStreetMap,[5] Twitter,[6] WOEID Search Engine (archive link) and Nations24.

A successor to the WOEID project is Who's On First.

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From WOEID Search Engine:[7]

  • 4118 - Toronto
  • 44418 - London
  • 615702 - Paris
  • 2295019 - New Delhi
  • 2295380 - Varanasi
  • 2442047 - Los Angeles
  • 2459115 - New York
  • 2487956 - San Francisco
  • 23424851 - Iran
  • 29128560 - Kaithi

Example

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E.g. Berlin does not know about Germany, which itself doesn't know about Europe and so forth.[clarification needed] GeoPlanet records, or places as they are called by Yahoo!, always (except one) have a reference to its parent place and therefore offer relations between places like the following:[8]

  • Parent (direct surrounding place)
  • Child (direct sub-places)
  • Siblings (places sharing the same parent and place type)
  • Ancestors (set of all parents)

If you take e.g. our company's district you will get the following family tree:

  • Deutschland (WOEID 23424829)
    • Bundesland Berlin (WOEID 2345496)
      • Stadtkreis Berlin (WOEID 1259838)
        • Berlin (WOEID 638242)
          • Ortsteil Pankow (WOEID 26821868)
          • Ortsteil Prenzlauer Berg (WOEID 26821872)
          • Ortsteil Wedding (WOEID 26821851)
        • Suan Luang (WOEID 12756344)
          • ...

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Yahoo! WOEID Lookup". Zourbuth Project.
  2. ^ "Free geo data solutions compared: GeoNames.org vs. Yahoo! GeoPlanet". Cosmo Code. 24 January 2010.
  3. ^ "Yahoo! GeoPlanet™ Data". Yahoo!. Archived from the original on 22 August 2014. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  4. ^ "Flickr Services: Flickr API: flickr.places.getInfo". www.flickr.com. Retrieved 2016-05-01.
  5. ^ "Key:woeid - OpenStreetMap Wiki". wiki.openstreetmap.org. Retrieved 2016-05-01.
  6. ^ "Twitter Developer Documentation". developer.twitter.com. Retrieved 2019-01-08.
  7. ^ "WOEID Search Engine (archive link)" originally findmycity.com
  8. ^ "Free geo data solutions compared: GeoNames.org vs. Yahoo! GeoPlanet - CosmoCode GmbH". www.cosmocode.de. Archived from the original on 2010-01-27.