The Place Finder Web Service offers "find a place" functionality for your Internet applications. You can use the Place Finder Web Service to input a place name and receive a ranked candidate list of place names and associated coordinates.
The Place Finder Web Service provides access to geographic place name data from several sources including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and ESRI. It also provides landmark data from GDT. The Place Finder Web Service recognizes more than three million place names including geographic regions (such as continents, states, cities), bodies of water, and major points of interest.
The Place Finder Web Service includes the following capabilities:
http://arcweb.esri.com/services/v2/PlaceFinder.wsdl
https://arcweb.esri.com/services/v2/PlaceFinder.wsdl
Note: HTTPS is available if you need added security to call ArcWeb Services. The Authentication Web Service and other ArcWeb Services must be accessed with the same IP address for the authentication token to be valid.
Interact with a live sample of a Place Finder Web Service client. For information on creating clients for ArcWeb Services, For information on creating clients for ArcWeb Services, including downloadable code for JavaServer Pages (JSP) with Glue, C# ASP.NET, and VB ASP.NET, see Introducing client samples.