wraith gazelle
Hello 👋🏻 I am a bit confused about Google Places API policies that allow storing only place_id permanently, and latitude/longitude for 30 days. What about names and categories? If my user has a list of 30 saved places, I don't want to make 30 API calls each time they load the page right ?
I am developing a travel app.
I need to save the place in the user itinerary.
Does the names and categories fall in the 30 days ?
little herald
According to the official Google Maps Platform Terms:
You can store Place IDs.
As per the save place IDs for later use documentation, it explicitly allows you to save the place_id and reuse it later but it's recommended to refresh it if it has become 12 months old.
As per 3.4 Caching, you can temporarily cache latitude/longitude for up to 30 consecutive calendar days.
After 30 days, you must delete or refresh those coordinates.
As explicitly stated in 3.2.3 Restrictions Against Misusing the Services., you cannot store place names, categories, addresses, or other place details permanently.
Google’s terms prohibit persistent storage of Places API content beyond the allowed caching period and this includes names, categories, and other descriptive fields.
wraith gazelle
According to the official Google Maps Platform Terms:
You can store Place IDs.
...
Thank you for your answer. So, I understand that I cannot store place names, categories, addresses, or other place details permanently.
I’m using React, which can cause the page to refresh frequently. Can I use a short-TTL cache (for example, 5 minutes)? Not a permanent cache, just a short one to avoid spamming requests during page refreshes within a single session.
The terms are meant to prevent collecting and storing Google data, right? This works for one-time searches, but not for a use case where a place needs to be shown repeatedly to the user.
If a user has 20 places and refreshes the page three times in a 10 seconds, that’s 60 Google requests.
Without a short cache (5–10 minutes), this isn’t viable.
Travel app like WanderLog use google map and it seems they have a short time cache.
Is it a "grey" zone not really specified in the legal terms ?