Warning signs you are locked into a proprietary format
Vendor lock-in around a geocoding response format creeps in gradually. Here are the specific warning signs worth watching for.
My Geocode blog (page 5)
Notes on geocoding, IP data, and building on the My Geocode API.
Older posts
Coordinate precision and floating-point rounding errors
Storing or computing coordinates using the wrong numeric type can introduce rounding errors on the order of meters, entirely separate from any error in the original geocoding.
Build a simple "nearest office" finder
Geocode a visitor's address once and compare it against a short fixed list of office coordinates in your own code to find the closest match.
Improved coverage for rural and low-density postal codes
Postal code coverage has improved specifically in rural and low-density areas, where postal boundaries tend to be harder to map accurately.
Building a broadband coverage checker for a service address
An internet provider's sales team needed an instant answer for a specific service address, not just a general sense of which postal codes were served.
Why migration should take an afternoon, not a quarter
If switching a location API takes a quarter, the previous integration was designed to make leaving expensive, whether or not that was the stated intention.
How elevation data sources get validated
Elevation figures are checked against fixed, independently surveyed benchmark points with known heights, and consistency across nearby samples is a further useful sanity check.
Geocode addresses that include apartment or unit numbers
Unit and apartment numbers do not need to be stripped out before geocoding an address, and doing so can lose useful information for no benefit.
A simple cost model for comparing location data vendors
Comparing geocoding vendors on price alone misses real costs elsewhere. Here is a simple model that accounts for more than the per-request rate.
Verifying a rental property's address for a listing site
A vacation rental platform kept discovering listings with addresses that were slightly, sometimes deliberately, wrong, after a guest had already shown up and found nothing at the pin.
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