Geocoding is the process of transforming a description of a location such as a pair of coordinates, an address, or a name of a place—to a location on the earth’s surface.
You can geocode by entering one location description at a time or by providing many of them at once at a table.Â
The resulting locations are output as geographic features with attributes, which can be used for mapping or spatial analysis.
You can quickly find various kinds of locations through geocoding. The types of locations that you can search for include points of interest or names from a gazetteer, like mountains, bridges, and stores; coordinates based on latitude and longitude or other reference systems.
Geocoding is the process of converting addresses (like “1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA”) into geographic coordinates (like latitude 37.423021 and longitude -122.083739), which you can use to place markers on a map, or position the map.
What can geocoding be used for?
With geocoded addresses, you can spatially display the address locations and recognize patterns within the information. This can be done by simply looking at the information or using some of the analysis tools available with ArcGIS.
You can also display your address information based on certain parameters, allowing you to further analyze the information.
Geocoding acts as a crucial part of customer data management. Nearly every organization maintains address information for each customer or client.Â
This is usually in tabular format, containing the customer name, address, buying habits, and any other information you have collected. Geocoding allows you to take your customers’ information and create a map of their locations.Â
You can find the address by narrowing your search to a specific region, finding a particular feature, and interpreting a point along with that feature, the computer is doing the same process to assign a location to an address when geocoding
You can also use the Geocoding API to find the address for a given place ID.
The Geocoding API provides a direct way to access these services via an HTTP request