Geocoding you can check
A geocoder turns “101 W Main St, Rocksprings, TX 78880” into a latitude and a longitude. Done in bulk, the hard part is not the lookup: it is knowing which of the 500 answers are wrong. Here every answer is drawn on a map as it arrives, and the uncertain ones are set aside.
A result is marked to check when:
- only the town, or only the ZIP or postcode, was found for a street address;
- the match is weak (the street exists, but the number or the town does not quite match);
- for a British address, the answer lies more than 300 meters from the center of its postcode, in which case the pin is moved to the postcode center.
The list under the map gives the reason for each one. Drag the pin to the right place, or keep it as it is. Addresses that were not found at all are listed too, and can be placed by hand.
What you can send
One address per row, in one column (“10 Main St, Boston, MA 02134”) or split over street, city, state and ZIP columns. Rows can be from the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand or elsewhere if a column gives the country. Rows that already have latitude and longitude are kept as they are.
Before anything is sent you see the count: how many addresses will be looked up, how many rows repeat one already in the list, and how many do not count toward your daily lookup limit for another reason.
What is kept, and where
Your file is read in your browser. Only the text of each address leaves it, to our geocoding server and on to the provider. Our server does not keep the addresses: it keeps the coordinates under a one-way code computed from the address, so the same address is not looked up twice, and forgets them after 180 days.
Accuracy, honestly
Most US and Canadian addresses are matched to a building. In the UK, many house numbers are not in the open map data, so the tool places them along the street and checks them against the postcode. Rural addresses and new streets are the usual misses. That is why every result is on a map you can correct.
Questions
How many addresses can I geocode for free?
Up to 500 rows per list, and 500 new addresses a day. Addresses repeated in the list, rows that already have coordinates and British postcodes do not count toward your daily lookup limit. The 500-row limit per map still applies.
Can I download the latitude and longitude?
Yes, with Pro ($19 for 7 days): your list with latitude, longitude and match precision added, as Excel, CSV, KML or GeoJSON. The free tool shows every result on the map and lets you correct it.
Which geocoder is used?
Addresses are looked up with Geoapify, which is built on OpenStreetMap. British postcodes use the open data of the Office for National Statistics, through postcodes.io.
How long does it take?
The first results show within seconds. About 500 new addresses take two to three minutes; addresses looked up in recent months appear immediately.
Other ways to use AddressPlotter
- Plot addresses on a map
- Excel to map
- CSV to map
- ZIP code map
- Postcode map
- Excel to KML
- Heat map from addresses