What is a Google place ID (and CID), and why keep it?
By Doug Nielsen, Product Manager · Updated · first published
A Google place ID is the identifier Google's APIs use for one listing; a CID is an older numeric ID for the same place, found in some Maps URLs. Keep both: they're the stable key for deduplicating and refreshing a lead list.
Our Google Maps data extractor exports place_id and CID columns, plus google_id and kgmid, Google's two other IDs for a place.
Key takeaways
- Dedupe and merge refreshes on place ID, never on name and address.
- IDs are text: a CID opened as a number loses digits.
- IDs can change after merges or splits, but far less often than names.
On this page6
Place ID and CID, briefly
Besides place ID and CID, a places export has google_id, Google Maps' feature ID, which holds the CID in hexadecimal. To read the IDs from a link, paste it into our Google Maps link to coordinates tool.
| ID | Looks like | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| place_id | An opaque text string, usually starting ChIJ | Places API requests and responses |
| cid | A decimal number, usually 19 or 20 digits | Google Maps links with a cid= parameter |
| google_id | Two hex numbers, 0x…:0x…; the second, in decimal, is the CID | Inside the long URL of a Maps listing |
Store all three as text: Excel keeps only 15 digits of a number.
Note
Stable, not permanent
Why they belong in your export
Deduplication that actually works
Adjacent ZIP-code searches overlap. Place ID collapses them exactly; name-and-address matching only approximately, which means wrongly.Merging refreshes without creating duplicates
Six months on, the ID says “same business, new rating”. The list-refresh routine depends on it.Linking a CRM record back to the live listing
The rep is one click from today's reviews and hours.
Get the whole list in one job
- 100 free credits
- No card required
Why name-and-address matching fails
Is “Joe's Plumbing”, “Joe's Plumbing LLC” and “Joes Plumbing & Heating” one business or three? Names and address formats vary, and chain locations legitimately share names. Phone numbers make a poor primary key: related businesses share lines, and numbers get reassigned after a closure.
Watch out
Wrong merges hide
How to store place IDs and CIDs
Import every ID column as Text; the CSV vs XLSX guide shows how. Hubertino's export includes all three IDs among its 38 columns, and the REST API returns the same values.
- Make the place ID your account records' primary key.
- Don't let a downstream tool drop it as unused.
Common questions
Can a business have more than one place ID?
Do I need an API key to use a place ID?
Written by
Doug Nielsen, Product Manager
Doug works on Hubertino; the guides on this site are published under his name. Last updated .