Free batch geocoding application
May 5, 2008 (posted by ElektroMoose)The most recent free street data that I have found is the StreetMap data (based on 2000 Tigerline data) that comes with an ArcView license. As you can imagine, this data is particularly ill-suited for geocoding addresses in areas that have experienced substantial new development in the last eight years. Luckily, I just found a great web application that allow you to obtain X/Y (latitude/longitude) coordinates based on street address. Better yet, it allows you to batch process the addresses that you want to geocode.
The REP is currently geocoding the addresses of bank foreclosures in Sacramento County. Using StreetMap data (based on 2000 Tigerline data) I was only able to geocode 20% of the 4,681 addresses that I had. Using batchgecode.com, I was able to gecode 4,674 of the 4,484. Not bad for a free web app considering that newer street data can easily cost you over $8,000.
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BatchGeocode is great, but there is one drawback — in some instances, an address match cannot be found and the site is automatically assigned to the center point of the zipcode or city. These imprecise geocodes can be identified by geocoding your list a second time based on city and zip only. Coordinates in the initial set of geocodes by address are not precisely geocoded by address if they match coordinates returned for the city/zip geocodes (generated at step 6 on the Batch Geocoder form) A quick way to spot the imprecise addresses is to copy this second list of coordinates into a spreadsheet and subtract them from the first set. City-only or zipcode-only matches will equal 0.00000000…..
For massive jobs, I use Maptitude. It is a full-fledged GIS and costs $500. You get an enhanced 2006 TIGER nationwide street file with the software at no extra cost. Geocoding is extremely fast and seems to have no limits. In 2004, I geocoded the entire Michigan registered voter file n a single batch using Maptitude i. (6.8 million names — 98% match rate.)
Thank you for pointing out that addresses that are not matched are assigned lat/long of 0. Although BatchGeocode states that users shouldn’t geocode more than 500 addresses at a time I had no problem doing 4,500 at a time.
I don’t have any experience with Maptitude but I imagine that the 2006 Tiger street file is a big step-up from the 2000 Tiger street file included with ArcView.
I wish there was a way to take advantage of Google’s super-current street information. I also wouldn’t mind having the ability to convert locations of certain businesses into point shape files for use in ArcView. Any developers out their want to do a little programming for the REP?
If you need to convert KML placemarks to shapefiles, you might try kml2shp — freeware described here:
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/the-last-word-for-now-on-converting-google-earth-kml-files-to-shapefiles
I’ve used it, but only for a few dozen points, so don’t know how well it handles thousands.
Thanks!
I can’t get kml2shp to work. I have tried saving numerous point features as KML but none of the KML files can be opened by kml2shp. thoughts?
I also had problems with KLM2SHP and was unable to successfully create shp files from Google Earth/Map KML files. Try KLMer (http://xbbster.googlepages.com/kmler). I single license costs about $20 and I had no problem importing KLM map objects to shp files using KMLer.
If you’d like to try a desktop geocoder, Aliwal Geocode might be useful. It’s open source and uses Yahoo maps & geocoding API too.
USC has developed a new site for geocoding address data which is free, secure, accurate, and located at https://webgis.usc.edu – The site can process databases of addresses or single ones and can do deterministic address parsing and normalization too.