How to link to a business on Google Maps/Places

I found that finding the “proper” URL of a business on Google Places, also known as Google Maps isn’t obvious, so put together this little tutorial. By “proper” I mean the simple (with no unnecessary information in the URL), unique identifier that will always take you to the right page as long as it exists or as long as Google doesn’t change its system.
1. Search Google for the business by its phone number, name or address.
2. Click the “maps” tab. The result might look like this:

3. Right click the business name and select “open link in new tab”.
Notes: Or you can open it in a new window if you wish.
If you are on a mac use command click to open in a new window.
If your results showing only the map and in left side bar, you can still click on the business name, but you might have t click first the drop icon to see it.
The resulting page might look like this:

4. Notice the difference between the URLs of the two pages/screenshot. The first one has the search query (the phone number in our case) and a lot of other information in it. The second one starts with this “http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=” then a 20 digit number. Cut the rest of the URL off to get to the cleanest address for the business. If you use that shortened URL the page loaded will not identify what browser you used, where you came from or what search query you entered earlier.