The Business Profile short link, and where to find your place id

Three things get called the Business Profile URL, and they are in three different states. The short name is closed: nobody can create one now. The place id is not a URL at all, but it is the identifier everything else hangs off, and Google documents it properly, including a finder you can use in a browser. And exactly one URL shape that points at a named place is published by Google, in the Maps URLs documentation, with the place id as a parameter.

The short link, and the state it is in

Google’s Business Profile Help page “Manage your business short name & URL” describes what the short name did:

When you share your short name, customers can enter the name’s URL in the browser’s address bar to go directly to your Business Profile.

Note the destination. It opened the profile. It was not an identifier you could look anything up with, and it was not a form.

The feature is frozen. That page opens by saying you can no longer create or edit short names, and that the ones already in existence keep working but “will no longer be shown on the Business Profile to customers”. The deletion instructions carry their own warning, which is the operative sentence for anyone who still has one: “You can’t create a new short name.”

So if you have a short name, leave it alone. If you do not, there is nothing to apply for, and the identifier that is still documented is the place id.

What a place id actually is

Google’s Place IDs page opens with the definition:

A place ID is a textual identifier that uniquely identifies a place.

Then it rules out two assumptions the word identifier invites.

The first is shape. “The length of the identifier may vary (there is no maximum length for place IDs).” The examples on that page start at ChIJgUbEo8cfqokR5lP9_Wh_DaM and run up to strings many times that length, so any field you store one in should not carry a guessed limit.

The second is uniqueness, which only runs in one direction. A place id identifies one place, but a place does not have exactly one id: “It is possible for the same place or location to have multiple different place IDs. Place IDs may change over time.”

Coverage is broad rather than universal, and Google words it that way: “Place IDs are available for most locations, including businesses, landmarks, parks, and intersections.”

Where Google documents finding one

On that same page, under the heading “Find the ID of a particular place”, Google embeds a tool and tells you to use it: “Use the place ID finder below to search for a place and get its ID”. You search for the business, it returns the id. That is the first-party answer to where your place id lives, and it needs no API key and no code. The page also notes that “Alternatively, you can view the place ID finder with its code in the Maps JavaScript API documentation.”

For the programmatic route, the Maps URLs documentation points at the same place: “To programmatically retrieve Place IDs, you can use the Places API: Text Search(ID Only) features.” It adds that “This is a non-cost method for obtaining Place IDs.”, and that “Place IDs can also be retrieved when a user clicks or taps a POI on maps.”

What we could not find is a Business Profile Help page documenting place ids at all. Searching Google’s own help centre for it returns owner threads in the community forum asking where to find one, not a help article. The documentation for your own business’s identifier sits in the Maps Platform docs, not in the product help.

Where the id turns up if you use the APIs

Two references name it, and they name two different identifiers, which is where the confusion comes from.

In the Places API (New), the place resource has an id, “The unique identifier of a place.”, and a name, which is “This Place’s resource name, in places/{placeId} format. Can be used to look up the Place.”

The Business Profile APIs give a location its own separate identifier: “Google identifier for this location in the form: locations/{locationId}.” The place id is not that. It sits inside the location’s metadata, which Google describes as “Additional non-user-editable information about the location.”, and the field documentation says “this field is populated with the place ID for the location” and that “This ID can be used in various Places APIs.”

The one URL shape Google publishes

The Maps URLs documentation describes its search action as a way to “launch a Google Map that displays a pin for a specific place”. For a specific place it gives a recommended form, query=PLACE_NAME&query_place_id=PLACE_ID, and its own worked example is this:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=starbucks&query_place_id=ChIJsU30zM1qkFQRbnOm1_LBoG0

Three constraints on that page travel with it. The version parameter is not optional: “This parameter is required in every request.” and “The only valid value is 1.” The id beats the text when both are present: “If you specify both parameters, the query is only used if Google Maps cannot find the place ID.” And there is a ceiling: “URLs are limited to 2,048 characters for each request.”

Google also states the reason to bother with the id rather than a name: “If you are trying to definitively link to a specific establishment, the place ID is the best guarantee that you will link to the right place.”

If you already call the Business Profile APIs, there is a second option that needs no assembly at all. A location’s metadata carries mapsUri, documented as “Output only. A link to the location on Maps.”

What we will not print

We are not giving you a format for the panel a customer sees when your profile opens in Google Search. The Maps URLs documentation covers Maps, and the short name page covers a feature that is closed. Neither publishes a Search-side format, and every format for one we have opened was read out of a live address bar rather than out of documentation, so treat them as undocumented behaviour that nothing obliges Google to keep.

The maintenance rule, which has a number on it

Storing the id is explicitly allowed. “Place IDs are exempt from the caching restrictions stated in Section 3.2.3(b) of the Google Maps Platform Terms of Service.” and “You can therefore store place ID values for later use.” What is not allowed is assuming it is permanent:

Because Place IDs may change due to updates on the Google Maps database, Google recommends refreshing place IDs if they are more than 12 months old.

Checking costs nothing: “You can refresh Place IDs at no charge”. When an id has gone stale, Google returns one of two conditions.

Status	What Google’s documentation says
`INVALID_REQUEST`	“the place ID has been truncated or otherwise modified, and is no longer correct”
`NOT_FOUND`	“A place ID may become obsolete if a business closes or moves to a new location.”

The relocation case has a documented trail in the place resource itself: “If this Place is permanently closed and has moved to a new Place, this field contains the new Place’s resource name”, which is what you follow rather than guessing.

So the working rule for an owner: keep any short name you still have and do not delete it, get your place id from Google’s own finder, build anything you print or publish on the documented Maps URLs search action, and re-check the id after a move, a closure, or twelve months, whichever comes first.