How we treat null and low-confidence results
When a query genuinely cannot be resolved reliably, returning nothing is a better answer than returning a guess dressed up as a fact. Here is the reasoning behind that choice.
Tag
#confidence
Read a confidence score correctly before you trust it
A confidence score tells you how sure the match is, not whether the address exists, and the two are easy to conflate.
What "high precision" should mean for a geocoded result
Calling a result high precision means something specific. It should mean the match resolved to an exact building or point, not merely that a response came back quickly.
Confidence scoring: what goes into the number
A confidence score is not a single measurement, it is a combination of several signals about how sure a match is. Understanding those inputs makes the number far more useful.
Why "just use lat and lon" oversimplifies location precision
A pair of coordinates looks like the whole answer, but without knowing how they were derived, two identical-looking coordinate pairs can carry very different reliability.
Reading the confidence and precision fields correctly
Precision tells you what kind of match you got. Confidence tells you how sure the geocoder is. Mixing up the two leads to bad filtering logic.