Technical Details of the Address Parser/Normalizer

Platform Summary

Technical Specs

Bugs, Requests & Issues

Known Bugs

Overview

Address normalization converts peices of an input address into their standardized equivalents. Once the type of the tokens have been identified, normalization is performed with more alias tables to make a best effort attempt to normalize the components to the desired output format. Currently, we have fairly compliant implementations of the USPS Publication 28 Standard, the US Census TIGER/Line Address Format, the address format used by the Los Angeles County Chief Information Office. Details of these formats are below.

Address Formats

Users can select which ouput format they would like their data placed into. Currently we are fairly compliant with the following address formats.

Format

USPS Publication 28 Address Standard

US Census TIGER/Line Address Format

Los Angeles County Chief Information Office

The main difference between these formats is the granularity that the address components are broken up into. The following table lists the address components that each address format reports. An X means the format supports a seperate field for the address component, while a - means that the address component is not supported. When a component is not supported, it will instead be contained as part of the Name field.

Address component	USPSPublication28	USCensusTiger	LACounty	Examples
Number	X	X	X	123
Number Fractional	X	X	X	1/2
Pre-Directional	X	X	X	North, S, E, West
Pre-Qualifier	-	X	X	Old, New, Business
Pre-Type	-	X	X	Route, US HWY, Avenue, Via, Paseo
Pre-Article	-	-	X	La, De La, Del
Name	X	X	X	Main
Post-Article	-	-	X	La, De La, Del
Suffix	X	X	X	Street, Blvd
Post-Qualifier	-	X	X	Private, Bypass
Post Directional	X	X	X	North, S, E, West
Suite Type	X	X	X	Apt, Suite, FL
Suite Number	X	X	X	24A
Post Office Box Type	X	X	X	PO Box, RR, HC
Post Office Box Number	X	X	X	0255

CASS Certification

Please note that this software is not USPS CASS Certified but works fairly well on most normal address data and is constantly being improved. If you encounter any problems or find any cases where the software fails, we would like to hear about it so we can work to improve the quality of the services. Please let us know.