GeoPlanet is a computer platform for coordinating world-wide

geographic information Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also cal ...

, and providing both text and

cartographic Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

output, such as digital maps for any location in the world. It provides a location infrastructure for

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

s, portals and both Web and WAP sites. It was developed by GDC, a London-based geographic information company, which was acquired by Whereonearth in 1998. When Whereonearth spun off GDC in 2002, it kept GeoPlanet. When

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

purchased Whereonearth in 2005, it acquired GeoPlanet. An integral part of GeoPlanet is the WOEID (Where On Earth IDentifier), a unique 32-bit reference identifier, now assigned by Yahoo!, that identifies any feature on Earth. In addition to the strict numerical WOEID, GeoPlanet also has a hierarchical structure that allows accessing surrounding locations, and zooming up and down administrative divisions. In 2009, Yahoo! released GeoPlanet's WOEID data to the public, but the last release was 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". In June 2015, Yahoo announced that the GeoPlanet APIs would be dropped as the functionality is now available through their Yahoo Query Language and BOSS APIs. The GeoPlanet APIs stopped responding to requests in late August 2016.

References

External links

* * Cartography Discontinued Yahoo! services Geographical technology {{Cartography-stub