A WOEID (Where On Earth IDentifier) is a unique 32-bit reference identifier, originally defined by
GeoPlanet GeoPlanet is a computer platform for coordinating world-wide Geographic information system, geographic information, and providing both text and Cartography, cartographic output, such as digital maps for any location in the world. It provides a locat ...
and now assigned by
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
, that identifies any feature on Earth. In 2009, Yahoo! released GeoPlanet's WOEID data to the public,
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".
WOEIDs are used by a number of other projects, including
Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
,
OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
WOEID Search Enginean
Nations24
WOEID of some popular locations on Earth
From WOEID Search Engine:
* 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
E.g. Berlin does not know about Germany, which itself doesn't know about Europe and so forth. 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:
[ ]
* 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
*
Discrete Global Grid
A discrete global grid (DGG) is a mosaic that covers the entire Earth's surface.
Mathematically it is a space partitioning: it consists of a set of non-empty regions that form a partition of the Earth's surface. In a usual grid-modeling strategy ...
*
List of geocoding systems
References
{{reflist
Geographic object identifiers
Geocodes