
What is a POI (point of interest)?
A point of interest (POI) is a dedicated geographic entity such as a milestone, an institute, a heritage site, or a corporate office. Points of interest are the base for most of the data supporting location-based applications.
What is a POI database?
Since the phrase is a mouthful, 'points of interest' is often abbreviated as ‘POI’. Many companies that sell POI databases or POI data API’s name their products ‘Places Data APIs’.
What is a point of interest on a map?
Points of interest. A point of interest (POI for short) is a term used in cartography (and therefore in reference to maps or geodatasets) for the choice to represent a particular feature using an icon that occupies a particular point.
What is poi in OSM?
A POI does not necessarily have to be stored as a point in a geodatabase (see #In OSM for details particular to us); it merely is represented as a point in the user interface (for example, in the standard tile layer ).

What is POI in XAML?
A POI is a specific point on the map that represents something of interest. For example, the location of a business, city, or friend.
How to display multi point shape on map?
Display a multi-point shape on the map by using the MapPolygon class. The following example, from the UWP map sample, displays a red box with blue border on the map.
How to display pushpins on a map?
Display pushpins, images, and shapes on the map by adding MapIcon, MapBillboard, MapPolygon, and MapPolyline objects to a MapElements collection of a MapElementsLayer object. Then, add that layer object to the Layers collection of a map control.
How to display custom UI elements on a map?
Display custom UI elements on the map using XAML. Position XAML on the map by specifying the location and normalized anchor point of the XAML.
Why is the map icon hidden?
By default, the map icon's image is not guaranteed to be shown. It may be hidden when it obscures other elements or labels on the map. To keep it visible, set the map icon's CollisionBehaviorDesired property to MapElementCollisionBehavior.RemainVisible.
What is normalized anchor point?
The NormalizedAnchorPoint is the point of the image that is anchored to the Location property of the MapBillboard. The point 0.5,1 is the bottom center of the image. Because we've set the Location property of the MapBillboard to the center of the map's control, the bottom center of the image will be anchored at the center of the maps control. If you want your image to appear centered directly over a point, set the NormalizedAnchorPoint to 0.5,0.5.
Can you use the same image for multiple map icons?
If you use the same image for multiple map icons, declare the RandomAccessStreamReference at the page or app level for the best performance.
Listening for click events on POIs
If you want to respond to a user tapping on a POI, implement GMSMapViewDelegate, and implement the mapView (_:didTapPOIWithPlaceID:name:location:) method, as shown in the following example:
Showing details in an info window
POIs appear on the map by default, but there is no default on-click UI (the API does not automatically display an info window or any other user interface when the user taps a POI). The following example shows how to use a marker to display an info window for a POI:
Stopping POIs from showing on the map
You can hide POIs by applying custom styles to all POIs or to specific categories of POIs.
Based on this session
Add a map to your iOS app and set markers, change the user's view, or customize the way users interact with your map.
POI Entity Properties
The following table describes the properties that you can query to get information about worldwide points of interest. These properties make up the PointsOfInterest entity type that is used by the Microsoft data source.
Entity Types
For a complete list of the entity type IDs that you can query, see POI Entity Types.
How to query the PointsOfInterest data source
You can query PointsOfInterest data source by using the following base URL and adding additional parameters such a geographical area to search and the properties you want to return. For a complete description of query options and more examples, see Query API.
What is a POI (point of interest)?
A point of interest is a specific physical location which someone may find interesting. Restaurants, retail stores, and grocery stores are all examples of points of interest. Since the phrase is a mouthful, 'points of interest' is often abbreviated as ‘POI’.
What are some applications of POI data?
Retailers and retail analytics firms use POI databases to get lists of where stores are located.
Where can you download free POI data?
POI Factory is one source of free POI data, but coverage and data freshness are lacking. POIplaza is another source of free POI data but it suffers from similar problems. In partnership with ESRI, SafeGraph has free points of interest data available on the ArcGIS Marketplace.
What are some pros & cons of the Google Places API?
The Google Places API generally has the best accuracy and one of the most comprehensive datasets of POI in the market. It is high quality and they have a fantastic team that keeps the data up-to-date. However, one of the biggest disadvantages with Google Places API is the licensing terms.
What are some Google Places API alternatives?
The Google Places API is one of the best-known Places APIs but enterprises often choose alternatives such as Foursquare Places, Factual Places, Facebook Places, and SafeGraph Places due to factors such as price, licensing terms, and data availability. At SafeGraph, we’ve seen companies switch from Google Places to SafeGraph Places due to SafeGraph’s broad and permissive licensing terms.
What are some strengths of Factual Places data?
Factual Places is another well-known Places API provider. They have global data on places, supporting 130 million POI in 52 countries. They also have many granular POI category specific attributes. For example, for restaurant POI, they have data on whether the restaurant accepts reservations, is cash only, is kid friendly, or has a kid's menu.
What are some Factual Places alternatives?
For several reasons, businesses choose Google Places, Facebook Places, Foursquare Places, and SafeGraph Places as alternatives to Factual Places. Businesses chose Foursquare Places vs. Factual Places because Foursquare has POI in every single country on earth while Factual only has data on 52 countries.

Add A Pushpin
Add A 3D Pushpin
- You can add three-dimensional objects to a map. Use the MapModel3D class to import a 3D object from a 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF)file. This image uses 3D coffee cups to mark the locations of coffee shops in a neighborhood. The following code adds a coffee cup to the map by using importing a 3MF file. To keep things simple, this code adds the image to the center of the …
Add An Image
- Display large images that relate to map locations such as a picture of a restaurant or a landmark. As users zoom out, the image will shrink proportionally in size to enable the user to view more of the map. This is a bit different than a MapIconwhich marks a specific location, is typically small, and remains the same size as users zoom in and out of a map. The following code shows the M…
Add A Shape
- Display a multi-point shape on the map by using the MapPolygon class. The following example, from the UWP map sample, displays a red box with blue border on the map.
Add A Line
- Display a line on the map by using the MapPolyline class. The following example, from the UWP map sample, displays a dashed line on the map.
Add Xaml
- Display custom UI elements on the map using XAML. Position XAML on the map by specifying the location and normalized anchor point of the XAML. 1. Set the location on the map where the XAML is placed by calling SetLocation. 2. Set the relative location on the XAML that corresponds to the specified location by calling SetNormalizedAnchorPoint. The following example shows a …
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