Enriching Geocoding & Search: More Data, Smarter Deduplication, and Forward & Reverse v2
On the heels of our last geocoding update for our Autocomplete and Place Details endpoints, we're excited to announce another major update to Geocoding & Search:
- v2 of our Forward and Reverse geocoding endpoints,
- label improvements for v1 endpoints,
- enhancements to Autocomplete deduplication,
- a collection of multi-language improvements,
- and another significant Foursquare OS Places update.
New Address Delimiter Parsing in Forward Geocoding
We've improved how we handle delimiters for house and building numbers, and their different ways they are represented around the world.
With this update,
you can now easily and more accurately search for addresses such as Telliskivi 60a/3, Tallinn or Kossuth Lajos utca 20. IV/15, 1053 Budapest, Hungary.
Improved Regional Context with Reverse Geocoding
Full contextual hierarchy is now available in all Reverse Geocoding responses, providing a straightforward path when you care about the context rather than a specific physical feature (e.g., in coarse lookups).
Previously,
the /reverse endpoint behavior depended on which layers you explicitly included.
When searching for an address, street, or venue (POI),
we served up the full context: locality, region, country, and so on.
But for a coarse lookup,
the API only included layers you explicitly specified and dropped everything else (e.g., country code).
We have fixed this in both v1 and v2, and all responses include a complete contextual hierarchy, regardless of your search. This response style matches the way our other search endpoints work and does not break any assumptions about result ordering.
With v2, just like v1, you'll receive the most granular layer result first based on your query.
Better Label Responses in v1 Endpoints
Labels generated from the Who's on First source are now much more sensible for places across the globe.
For instance, where the API used to return Seoul, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea,
we now simply return Seoul, South Korea.
All v1 APIs now include this improvement except /v1/search/structured.
Deduplication and More Relevance in Autocomplete
Our Autocomplete API enables seamless searching across many sources, including Foursquare OS Places, Geonames, OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, and Who's On First. While using such a broad range of sources ensures we have the best global coverage, it presents a deduplication problem when a location is present in multiple sources. With our smarter deduplication process, we’ve eliminated duplicate results across a range of location types:
- Tighter deduplication of addresses across our datasets;
- Leveraging the ease of edits in OpenStreetMap, OSM addresses are now preferred over other sources when there is a collision;
- More relevant results for focused searches, especially when searching for dense chains like 7-Eleven or Starbucks;
- East Asian language deduplication improvements when comparing inconsistent naming between sources;
- Better deduplication of place names with exotic Unicode representation (e.g., a stylized "𝐀𝐂𝐌𝐄, 𝐈𝐍𝐂." is considered the same as "ACME, Inc.")
Multi-Language Query Improvements
We updated the v1 and v2 /search endpoint to take into account the lang parameter when querying for POIs,
improving the quality of multilingual name searches.
Previously, if you were querying POI names in another language (e.g., the English name of a cafe whose primary name is Korean),
you would receive zero results when using Search.
Foursquare OS Places Update
We have now included an additional 8 million places from Foursquare OS Places, bringing the total number of available POIs from Foursquare to about 14 million.
Available Today
All of these improvements are available for you today! If you're using our SDKs, update to the latest version.
Learn More and Get Started
Ready to experience the power of Geocoding & Search v2? Here are some helpful resources to get you started:
We're confident Geocoding & Search v2 will significantly enhance your ability to build location-aware applications. With more data and improved results, it's never been a better time to leverage the power of location with Stadia Maps.
Start exploring today and unlock the full potential of location search in your current or next project!
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