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I am mostly seeking Bars and Pubs but Restaurants are a very nice bonus. I need a database with zipcode, city, state, longitude, latitude, establishment name, establishment contact information, maybe a category with sub categories if it's restaurants as well. I found one with Oddity Software. But after closer inspection after buying it, the database was garbage. It had very long obtrusive category names and/or sub category names, that would make indexing it for any need difficult. Then it had so many entries that were not restaurants, pubs, or bars.. like auto repair centers, and a minimum of at least 80 categories/sub categories that made no sense to the type of database it claimed to be. All of which had multiple entries with that category/sub category that didn't apply.

So I see all these new sites popping up here and there trying to be like yelp or doing something completely different like I want to do. However I don't know where these people are getting their initial databases from. I thought Oddity Software would be my golden fix until I purchased it, found out what I found out about it, then they refused to discuss things further with me.

So I am wondering here today. Who knows of a database similar to that of which I seek?

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3 Answers 3

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Well here's a few:

Proper Databases (Cheap / free but of variable quality) - you will probably have to convert to mySQL yourself as this is not a standard geospatial format given its relatively poor geo extensions.

APIs (usage restrictions, generally free to a certain level of use)

  • Foursquare
  • Google Places various others including Facebook, Gowalla, Yelp etc. - not sure how permissive their APIs are.

It's unlikely these will have accurate opening hours, so you might need something more expensive, such as CHD Expert. I can only assume that's incredibly expensive. Unfortunately, the rule is usually you get what you pay for so I suspect most people, including the big boys, are slightly winging it with the quality of data available.

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  • CHD is indeed expensive, just got off the phone with them. However I am liking what they have to say thus far. I ultimately need free reign over the DB with little limitation as far as to what I can do with said data there after obtain it or pull it, or how limited in a day/week/month I can obtain said data.. Google is a great resource just to mention on it however after x calls are made in a month to the API from your site/software thats when it gets really pricey. 10k+ from my understanding. But if you dont reach the limits, then awesome.
    – chris
    Mar 15, 2012 at 20:17
  • further on the google thing. I know they have a limit, and price modal, but last I knew they weren't yet strictly enforcing it.
    – chris
    Mar 15, 2012 at 20:19
  • Any one know how much Factual charges for the whole data? i'm not interested in the free one, but planning to buy data.
    – Zeus
    Jul 28, 2014 at 22:01
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There are similar questions:

that contain answers that may guide you to find the Points of Interest data you are looking for. Particularly take a look at OpenStreetMap, SimpleGEO, and POI Factory.

Additionally, you should browse the questions tagged as POI, business, data, and datasets.

Whatever dataset you choose to go with, be sure to read the Terms & Conditions to make sure you are legally able to use the data for your purposes.

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  • I think SimpleGEO might be no longer
    – Stev_k
    Mar 15, 2012 at 15:18
  • Can you share any reference stating that SimpleGEO data is no longer sharing their POI database? I know they were acquired by Urban Airship, but didn't hear any mention of their location database.
    – RyanKDalton
    Mar 15, 2012 at 15:25
  • OK, my bad, well what I meant is they are moving to Factual data, so not really a provider in their own right any more.
    – Stev_k
    Mar 15, 2012 at 15:36
  • Thanks for clearing that up. Its very good information when put into context.
    – RyanKDalton
    Mar 15, 2012 at 16:26
  • Actually, not just switching providers, but they are slowly closing all services. gpsworld.com/Wireless/news/… At this point I would not do anything with SimpleGeo m.techcrunch.com/2012/01/13/…
    – Ragi Yaser Burhum
    Mar 15, 2012 at 17:04
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You can check US Restaurants Database Directory, Biggest US database, have more than 996 thousand restaurants. You can also download US Restaurants Phone Number Database, US Restaurants Email Database. Data can be downloaded in access, excel, csv , sql formats..

You can also download Canada Restaurant Database.

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  • Good one, they do not have Cuisines though which is important, but the pricing plan is good.
    – Zeus
    Jul 28, 2014 at 21:45

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