Nov 2, 2010 10:29 GMT  ·  By

There's no shortage of location-based services around, despite the fact that even the best known, Foursquare, doesn't have any guarantees, especially since Facebook Places launched.

Still, one of the newest players in the space, SCVNGR, is bootstrapping its way towards international availability by being the first service to integrate the Google Places API.

“Our goal has always been to build the game layer on top of the world. But until today, we were missing a critical component…the rest of the world,” Seth Priebatsch, SCVNGR’s Chief Ninja (also founder), said in a statement.

“We’re excited to go live globally today, and to do so with the best location database on the planet,” he added.

SCVNGR, the name, which stands for scavenger, says it all, is focusing more on the gaming aspects and rewards users for challenges set up by businesses or even other users.

Until now it relied on data from GeoAPI, which was acquired by Twitter earlier in the year. But that data is limited compared to what Google now offers.

Note that the Google Places API is not live yet and SCVNGR is the first to use it publicly as an early partner. This explains why SCVNGR will only use the Places API from now on.

The API gives the location-based service access to millions of places around the world, around 50 million says Google, and more will be added. Effectively, it means that users will be able to check in and create challenges in any location around the world available in Google Places.

What's more, users and companies will be able to create challenges in any language they want, though the interface is still only available in English. That said, SCVNGR doesn't yet have any partnerships outside of the US, but it says it is already working with a company in London.