Place ID & CID Finder for Google Maps™

You needed one identifier. You lost twenty minutes. The API call is written. The key is in the console. All that is missing is the Place ID for one coffee shop, and somehow that turns into opening the Maps Platform documentation, loading a widget, typing the business name into yet another search box, and hoping the autocomplete picks the same branch you were actually looking at. It should take three seconds. It usually does not. WHY GETTING A PLACE ID IS MORE ANNOYING THAN IT SHOULD BE The identifier is not hidden. It is sitting in the address bar of the tab you already have open. The problem is that it is buried inside a URL segment that looks like line noise, encoded in a form nobody reads by eye. That leads to the usual workarounds, and each one has a cost: - The official Place ID Finder is a Maps JavaScript API widget. Every page load is a billable map load against somebody's key. - It only accepts a search query, so you have to find the business a second time. With chains that share a name across a city, the autocomplete regularly lands on the wrong branch. - A Places API request returns the identifier reliably, but now you are writing code and paying per call to answer a question you had while looking at a screen. - Copying the hex out of the URL by hand works, and then you still have to convert it, and it is easy to grab one character too few. Most people pick whichever of those hurts least that day. None of them is three seconds. WHAT THIS EXTENSION DOES It puts a Place ID button next to every place on Google Maps. Click it and a small card opens with the identifiers already resolved, each with its own copy button. No API key. No account. No network request of any kind. Here is what the card gives you: Place ID - the ChIJ style identifier used by the Places API, the Maps Embed API and the Maps JavaScript API. CID - the numeric identifier used by Google Business Profile and by short maps.google.com links. Feature ID - the raw hexadecimal pair the other two are derived from, for when you are debugging something unusual. Coordinates - latitude and longitude, read straight from the URL. Maps link - a ready made maps.google.com link built from the CID, which opens the listing directly. Place link - the equivalent link built from the Place ID. Copy all - every field above as plain text, formatted for pasting into a ticket, a spreadsheet or a client report. The button appears on search results as well as on the detail panel, so you can pull identifiers for a whole result page without opening each listing. HOW IT WORKS 1. Open Google Maps and find a place. 2. Click the Place ID button next to it. 3. Copy the field you need. That is the whole flow. There is no step where you wait for a response, because nothing is being requested. WHY IT WORKS WITH NO API KEY AND NO CONNECTION This part is worth explaining, because it is the reason the extension can ask for so little. A Google Maps place URL carries a feature ID: a pair of 64 bit hexadecimal values separated by a colon, sitting after the marker 1s in the data segment. The CID is simply the second of those two values converted to decimal. The Place ID is both values packed into a small protocol buffer and encoded as base64url. That means the identifiers are not looked up. They are computed, from information the page already handed your browser. Load the extension once and it keeps working with the network disconnected. It also means there is no rate limit to hit, no quota to exhaust, no key to rotate, and no server that could see which businesses you are researching, because there is no server involved. THE TOOLBAR POPUP Click the extension icon and it reads the Maps URL of the tab you are on and decodes it immediately, so the common case takes one click and no typing. The popup also accepts input directly. Paste a Maps URL from anywhere, or paste a bare ChIJ style Place ID, and it will decode that instead. Useful when someone sends you an identifier and you want to see which business it belongs to. Paste a CID and the popup will tell you plainly what it can and cannot do. A Place ID contains two 64 bit values and a CID is only the second of them, so the missing half cannot be recovered by arithmetic. Rather than guessing, the tool returns the CID and a working Maps link and explains why the Place ID is not derivable. An identifier that looks right but is wrong causes more damage than an honest gap. REAL SCENARIOS WHERE THIS HELPS Wiring up a Place Details request: You are testing an integration and need three or four real identifiers to develop against. Open the businesses, click, copy, paste into your test fixture. No key needed for the part that is not the actual API call. Embedding a map on a client site: The Maps Embed API takes a Place ID and renders a correct, named marker. Passing an address string instead gets you a geocoded approximation that sometimes lands across the street. Local SEO auditing: You are comparing a client listing against four competitors. Collect the CIDs for all five in about a minute and drop them into the audit sheet as stable references that survive a rename. Building review links: The Google review form takes a Place ID as a parameter. Grab the identifier, and you have the direct review URL for that business. Deduplicating a messy spreadsheet: Two rows, similar names, slightly different addresses. Same CID means the same listing. Different CIDs mean two listings, and now you know which problem you have. Filing a bug about map data: Support threads and issue trackers ask for the Place ID. Pasting the identifier is faster and less ambiguous than describing the business. PLACE ID OR CID Both identify the same place, and both derive from the same hex pair, but they are not interchangeable. Use the Place ID for anything on Google Maps Platform. Places API, Maps Embed API, Directions API and the review form all take a Place ID and will reject a CID. Use the CID for short …