Geocoding..........

Of course I have yet to find any map software that get my location correct by address. The main reason is my street counts up by 4's instead of the normal 2's per side In other words I'm 1258 and my neighbor is 1254 instead of 1256. Other than that is does get close you close enough to get what you want. Nice utility.

It's so awesome that it's listed in the FAQs.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/821

Both geocoding and reverse geocoding can be fun to play with. I pulled the coordinates from my county property records and put it in Mapsource and it is dead center of my 5 acre hobby farm. That got me to wondering, do most geocoding and reverse geocoding try to plot location on the midpoint on the street or somewhere else?

Also, just for fun I put my street address in and pulled the coordinates from each and created a waypoint in MapSource for each result. The best results were from Google, iBegin, Terraserver, and USC. Geocoder and Yahoo showed the same results as one another, but seemed to code a different street address than what I had entered. Google and Terraserver may have had an edge over Ibegina and USC, but the differences are probably not significant in this case.

When I used the Determine Street Address from coordinates, Google gives a range of addresses, but both Virtual Earth and iBegin show specific street addresses.

Just entered my address and most of the returns were in another subdivision with a similar SOUNDING but different spelling street name. That put the error at over a mile from all but Google and Terraserver which are off by about 100 meters.

Thy this web page out. It will allow you to put in an address or point at a location on the google map. It will also allow you to put in an address and show the cordinates.

http://www.itouchmap.com/latlong.html

itouchmap is one that I use to verify coordinates returned from other geocoders. In fact it's what I used to verify the coordinates from the other sites.

You can get coordinates on Google maps without a plugin. Just right click on a location and select "What's here?"

Google Maps not only has it right, but puts the marker centered on my house. All of the others put it kinda correct, but every one of them puts the marker in my street, and some on the side street where I am located (corner lot).

My street is in increments of 6, but it was explained to me that's not the reason most address geocoding can be a couple of hundred feet off. I was told that mapping software figures address coordinates using two known coordinates on any given street and figures everything in between mathematically. Where the error comes in, is they base their math on every house being equally spaced on the same sized lot. My house for example is probably 30 feet from the house to the east of me and 60 feet from the house to the west of me. Microsoft S&T also tells me my block goes to 1972 when it actually only goes to 1958.

The general indication from the feedback in this chain is that Google Maps is one of the most accurate for geocoding. I will have to try it next time. Thanks for the feedback, all!

Raj

I'll have to check this out. I haven't played with the geocoding yet.

Tried the web site listed above tonight. It is apparently blocking request now.