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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T00:14:29+00:00

Geocoder getFromLocationName is not returning anything if I’m searching for business places. Here are

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Geocoder getFromLocationName is not returning anything if I’m searching for business places. Here are my finding so far:

  • grocery places, commercial buildings -> no result
  • schools -> finding results, but only returning Latitude and Longitude. I have to do reverse geocoding in order to get the address based on the coordinates, but the address wouldn’t be accurate.
  • complete address -> same as school, only returning Latitude and Longitude
  • hospital and pharmacy -> returning Latitude and Longitude

I’ve tested this on 1.6, 2.1 and 2.2 devices that has Google Maps.

I’m trying to find if there’s a limitation explained somewhere on the SDK, but there is none except:

The amount of detail in a reverse
geocoded location description may
vary, for example one might contain
the full street address of the closest
building, while another might contain
only a city name and postal code. The
Geocoder class requires a backend
service that is not included in the
core android framework. The Geocoder
query methods will return an empty
list if there no backend service in
the platform
(http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Geocoder.html)

[update]
So after nights of research, I can’t seems to make it work – Google simply wont give me the result. Some discussion on android-developers points a fact that getFromBusinessName was omitted when Google Navigation came out. So I’m starting to assume that Google is pulling back some of their geocoding service.

I can always create a webpage that use Google Geocoder API, but its limited to 2500 api call – and I dont think it will be legal (lol). So what are my alternatives here?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’ve hit the same problem. I’m finding that the geocoding API often returns no results if I include the business/venue name, but by missing it off, the lat/long can be much less accurate.

    I’ve implemented a pragmatic solution:
    1. Call the API with a string including the business/venue name
    2. If it fails, call it a second time without the business/venue name, just the address

    I’ve yet to see a case where no location is returned, so it seems a decent compromise as it means I do at least get location data, if sometimes less accurate, and the cost of a second API call is mitigated with threaded calls.

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