On Jan 28, 2:18 pm, Jake <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > Examples:
> > > Cameron Village => Cameron, Tuckerman, AR 72473, USA
> > > Cameron Village Library => Cameron Dr, Norfolk, ON, Canada
>
> > The geocoder geocodes addresses. If you give it something, it will do
> > what it can with it (and return an Accuracy result to indicate how
> > well it thinks it's done). It's not an address validator.
>
> An accuracy level does NOT indicate "how well its done" and is useless
> for that purpose. From the docs: "This value indicates the resolution
> of the given result, but not necessarily the correctness of the
> result."

Admittedly, anthropomorphising a gecoder may not be the best thing to
do, but what I wrote was "how well **it thinks** it's done". That is,
an accuracy may indicate "I've tried to interpret what you gave me and
I've come up with something for which I'm confident about the state"
or "...the town" or "...the premises". You're right that it doesn't
say anything about correctness, but if you don't specify which
"Cameron" you mean, it has very little to go on and arguably any
"Cameron" is correct, including either of the two in Scotland.

The geocoder geocodes what you give it; it doesn't do business
searches, so finding a library called "Cameron Village Library" won't
be reliable. It interprets that as a postal address and attempts to
get what it can out of it, providing metadata which may help you judge
the worth of the result. In that case, the accuracy is 6 -- "I've
found something which matches the street". Since you haven't actually
given a street, it could well be suspect. The point is that the
geocoder assumes that whatever it's given *is* an address, and
attempts to use it on that basis.

Having said that, it does attempt some sanity checking, and adding
something like "Village" appears to bias the results to township
level. There was a similar case recently where it was necessary to add
"Ville" in France. Adding other things will confuse that
functionality.

If you don't like how the geocoder works, you are welcome to try
others.

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