Topic navigation: Web Browsers - Service Usage - Uploaded Databases
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Topics in this section
What are the required and optional output fields?
[There are two required output field sets]
bookkeeping - this adds information
about the transaction id, time take, and other geocoder metadata. These output fields
are required.
Output geocode - this is the latitude longitude information that
you want, plus a whole bunch of other metadata that helps you understand what the
quality of the geocode we produce is. These fields are also required.
[There are also many optional fields that you can select. You may or may not need these. They
slow down the processing somewhat so if you don't need them, it is best to leave
them unselected.]
Census Output field - this allows you to have census tract
information associated with your output data. This really really slows down the
processing so if you don't need it, we suggest that you leave this one not selected.
Matched address - When we geocode your data, you give us an address and we attempt
to match it. In some cases, we have to drop some pieces of the address if we don't
find a geocode that matches, like dropping the suffix "Street" if it is listed as
"Road" in the database. The Matched Address fields will report which pieces of the
input address we used to find the match. You can use this info to determine if there
are some inconsistencies with your input data that didn't match up with the geocode
processing so if you don't need it, we suggest that you leave this one not selected.
By comparing what you asked for and of that, which pieces wound up being used.
Parsed address - the first step in geocoding is to identify what the pieces of your
input address are, the number, the street name, the street suffix, etc. and then
to normalize them to USPS standards. The parsed Address fields will output our normalized
version of your input address that we used to search for a geocode.
Feature address - The feature address fields will provide you with all of the data about
the reference geographic object that we matched to and used to compute a geocode.
These will include the full set of attributes associated with the object. For a
street level address, this means you'll get back the address range of the street,
the data source it came from, the ID of the object in that data source so you could
go there and look at the object, in the Census Bureau Tiger/Line files for example,
and a whole bunch of other stuff including the geometry of the reference feature.
You can use this information to see what the official values are for an address.
For example if you give us an address that has an incorrect zip code, we may still
be able to find a match if the city is correct. The feature zip code field would
tell you what the correct zip code should have been. Similarly, if you give us an
incorrect city and the ZIP is correct so that we find a match, the feature city
field will tell you what the correct city should have been. (top)
Address Processing/Correction: I tried to give a wrong zip code for an address and it doesn't correct it.
Unfortunately our address standardization system will not correct an erroneous ZIP code for you at present, so
if you are trying that service you won't get this behavior. However, if you run it through our geocoding system
and we are able to find a match with a geographic object that has a ZIP code associated with it (street address,
parcel, etc.), the ZIP associated with that object will be returned in the F_ZIP field in the “verbose” output.
You have to select “verbose” as an output option if you are calling the API’s, or you should select the
“FeatureAddress” optional set of output fields if you are running a batch database on the site and it will include
this field as output for you. (top)
What projection should I use to display my points on a map?
To display coordinates obtained by our services on a map, we recommend using either Nad 1983 or WGS84 projections. (top)
