Geocoding & addresses
Turning address text into coordinates, and coordinates back into places — with the match quality attached.
Everything on Spatial Workflow about geocoding & addresses, in the order that usually works: understand the idea, then run the task, then fix it when it goes wrong. 23 guides in total.
3 learning paths run through this topic — follow one if you would rather work through a route than pick a single guide.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
- Geocoding Explained: From an Address String to a Coordinate geocoding addresses explained
- The Address Data Model: Why an Address Is Not a String address data model
- Choosing a Geocoder: Coverage, Licence and Cost Compared choosing a geocoder
- Match Quality Explained: Reading a Geocoder's Confidence Score geocoder match quality
- Rooftop, Interpolated or Centroid: Geocoding Precision Levels geocoding precision levels
- Address Matching Explained: Why Exact String Equality Fails address matching explained
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to Fuzzy-Match Place Names When Joining Spatial Data in Python fuzzy match place names python
- How to Geocode Addresses in Python geocode addresses python
- How to Parse and Normalise Addresses in Python parse addresses python
- How to Geocode with Nominatim from Python Without Being Blocked nominatim python geocode
- How to Batch Geocode Thousands of Addresses in Python batch geocode addresses python
- How to Cache Geocoding Results So a Rerun Costs Nothing cache geocoding results
- How to Validate Geocoding Results Before You Trust Them validate geocoding results
- How to Reverse Geocode Points to Addresses and Areas in Python reverse geocode python
- How to Match Addresses Against a Reference File in Python match addresses reference file
- How to Deduplicate an Address List in Python deduplicate addresses python
- How to Build an Offline Geocoder from Open Address Data offline geocoder python
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
- Geocoding Returns Wrong or Missing Coordinates geocoding wrong coordinates
- My Geocoder Returns No Match for Addresses That Exist geocoder returns no match
- Fixing 429 Too Many Requests When Geocoding geocoding 429 rate limit
- Fixing Geocodes That All Land in the Country Centroid geocodes country centroid
- Fixing Addresses That Break on Accents and Encoding address encoding accents
- Fixing a Geocoder That Matches the Wrong Town geocoder wrong town
Learning paths through this topic
A curated route rather than a list — the guides in the order that builds on itself.
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Finding & Fetching Data
Get the data before you analyse it — from OSM, web services and satellite catalogues.
Open path → -
GIS Data Cleaning
Turn messy spatial data into analysis-ready datasets.
Open path → -
Geocoding & Addresses
Address text is data too — and it is the messiest data in the file.
Open path →
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.