Postal Geocoding

Geocode Address Geocode Address World can geocode to a postal centroid if postcode information is available from the country. Postcode information can come from any of the data sources (TomTom, GeoNames, or Precisely). See Country Postal Data Coverage for a summary of Geocode Address Geocode Address World postal data coverage. Depending on the country, postal geocoding may provide more accurate results that geographic geocoding.

Postal level geocoding is possible if these conditions are met:
  • Your input address consists of a valid postcode.
  • The data source contains postcode information for the country. Not every country has postcode data.

Geocode Address Geocode Address World may return multiple close matches for postal geocoding. For example, a postcode of 12180 matches Troy NY but the identical postcode occurs in several other countries. If the input is the postcode only, then all those candidates are returned as close matches.

If the input includes geographic address elements (such as country, state, region, or city name), Geocode Address Geocode Address World may be able to use that information to return a more accurate single close match. If you want to use geographic address content to refine your postal geocoding results, consider the following:

Note: Different countries derive their postal data from either the TomTom, GeoNames, or Precisely sources. Therefore, the available geographic content in the postal data source varies by country. For example, city name (City) is a close match weighting factor for countries that use the GeoNames postal data source, but city name is ignored for countries that use the TomTom postal data source. See Data Sources and Coverage for information about the geographic content of the TomTom, GeoNames, and Precisely data sources.

Postal Geocoding with Geographic Information

In this postal geocoding example, the input address includes a valid postcode of 41012 and the province (StateProvince) of Emilia Romagna. A street address is provided, but this is ignored for postal geocoding.

Fornaci 40
Emilia Romagna
41012

Because the TomTom postal data source for Italy includes StateProvince, the province of Emilia Romagna is considered when evaluating close matches. Therefore, Emilia Romagna, Italy with the matching 41012 postal code is returned as the single close match with a Z1 result code. Candidates with a 41012 postcode from other countries may be returned as non-close candidates. If StateProvince or Country information was not provided on input, then Geocode Address Geocode Address World would return multiple close matches because the five-digit 41012 postcode can be found in a number of countries.
Note: The geographic content must be present in the postal data source in order refine postal geocoding results. For example, the Italy TomTom postal data source does not include city/town (City). So if you input the city of Carpi with the 41012 postal code, Geocode Address Geocode Address World ignores the city name and returns multiple close matches for the 41012 postal code (unless you also specified the ITA country name). See Data Sources and Coverage for information about the geographic content of the TomTom, GeoNames, and Precisely data sources.