Google Maps Suggestion (Autocomplete)

Same dropdown suggestions you see while typing into Google Maps — programmatic, fast, location-biased.

What you get

A ranked list of suggestions for your partial input. Each suggestion is either a place (with name, coordinate, address, item_id, country code) or a search keyword (text-only).

Use cases

• Search autosuggest in your own product, branded as yours but powered by Google's data.
• Typo-tolerant lookups — let users type "centrl par" and resolve to the right place.
• Place picker UI — confirm exact address before passing into Place Detail or Reviews actors.
• Keyword expansion for SEO / paid search — discover the way users phrase queries near a region.
• Disambiguation — show users the right "Empire State" between the building, the deli, and the casino.

Why this actor

• Location-biased — pass lat/lng to anchor suggestions to a city or neighborhood.
• Returns coordinates + item_id for place suggestions — drop straight into Place Detail or Reviews.
• Country / language aware — set country for ranking bias and language for localized labels.
• Very fast — single request, ~150–300 ms typical.
• Free — no per-query cost, no API key, no quota.

Sample input

{
    "keyword": "empire state",
    "lat": 40.7484,
    "lng": -73.9857,
    "language": "en",
    "country": "us"
}

Sample output

[
    {
        "name": "Empire State Building",
        "coordinate": [40.7484405, -73.98566439999999],
        "address": "West 34th Street, New York, NY",
        "item_id": "0x89c259a9b3117469:0xd134e199a405a163",
        "country_code": "US"
    },
    {
        "name": "Empire State Building",
        "coordinate": [40.748545199999995, -73.98576349999999],
        "address": "5th Avenue, New York, NY",
        "item_id": "0x89c259a9aeb1c6b5:0x35b1cfbc89a6097f",
        "country_code": "US"
    },
    {
        "keyword": "SUNY Empire State College"
    },
    {
        "name": "Empire State University at Manhattan",
        "coordinate": [40.7467543, -73.9819037],
        "address": "Park Avenue, New York, NY",
        "item_id": "0x89c259f2da56a213:0xaf8d3b37b072429b",
        "country_code": "US"
    }
]

How to get the inputs

• keyword — any partial text the user might type ("central pa", "empi", "sushi r").
• lat / lng — anchor for biasing suggestions to a region. Right-click any spot on Google Maps and copy the coordinates shown at the top of the context menu.

Tips

• Move the lat/lng anchor to bias toward different cities — same keyword can return Central Park NYC vs Sydney NSW.
• Items WITHOUT item_id are keyword-only suggestions (no specific place behind them).

Pair with other actors

• Send a suggestion's item_id into Google Maps Place Detail for a full place profile.
• Send a suggestion's item_id into Google Maps Reviews to pull customer reviews.
• Send a suggestion's coordinate into Google Maps Direction as origin or destination.
• For an unspecific search (no autocomplete, just keyword search), use Google Maps Search Places instead.