Places API fuzzy matching search

I just started playing around with the places API.

One thing I noticed is that most of my searches return a response like so:

{
"candidates": ,
"debug_log": {
"line":
},
"status": "ZERO_RESULTS"
}


Or I'll submit a request with "Northwestern" and only get 1 result when I expect more

{
"candidates": [
{
"formatted_address": "633 Clark St, Evanston, IL 60208, USA",
"name": "Northwestern University"
}
],
"debug_log": {
"line":
},
"status": "OK"
}


I'm not sure how Google performs matching and ordering of results, but is there a flag to set for fuzzy searching?

My use case is to tie company names in a database to State/Country codes as best as possible and most of my search results are returning ZERO_RESULTS.

Or is there a better suited API google offers?

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