The Geocoding API performs a lookup for a single location and returns:
- Latitude
- Longitude
- Geo-accuracy score
- Your address in a standardized format
Your location can be structured two ways:
- A single combined field (e.g., 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500)
- Or broken up and structured by street, city, state, county, postal code, and country
You are free to supply a subset of these fields (e.g., you can specify just street and state). However, the more info you provide, the more accurate the result.
Note that in some cases (e.g., you enter city without street, state or country) the geocoder may return multiple results, each of which will be returned through the API.
Geocoding Credits: SpatialKey partners with Bing, which offer both domestic and international geocoding. They require credits to be purchased, and each geocode will deduct one credit. Ask your Account Rep for more info on purchasing geocoding credits.
Geocoding Cache: Geocodes are not cached when using the Geocoding API. The Import and Lookup APIs cache geocodes for one year to prevent duplicate charges.
TIP! The Lookup and Import APIs include geocoding as part of their calls already and do not need to be combined with this separate API call. Use the Geocoding API anywhere you give users a field for address entry, need to verify an address, and/or convert to a lat/long.
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