In today’s dynamic world, accurate and timely geocoding data is more important than ever. According to Gartner, poor data quality costs organizations nearly $13 million per year. Businesses, organizations, and research institutions rely on precise location data to drive successful operations—from logistics and navigation to marketing and spatial analysis. This guide will explore what geocoding is, its importance, a comparison between SafeGraph’s geocoding, Google, and OpenStreetMap (OSM), and the wide-ranging applications of geocoding data.
Geocoding is the process of transforming descriptions of locations, such as addresses or place names, into geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude). This process is fundamental to numerous applications, enabling precise mapping, spatial analysis, and more. Some of the benefits include:
Accurate geocoding ensures navigation systems provide precise directions, critical for logistics, ride-sharing apps, and personal navigation devices. Geocoding enables these systems to translate an address into a pinpoint location on a map, ensuring users arrive at the exact destination.
Businesses use geocoding services such as Placekey to guarantee accurate deliveries and help customers find store locations effortlessly, enhancing overall satisfaction. By converting addresses into geographic coordinates accurately, companies can ensure their logistics operations run smoothly, reducing delivery errors and improving customer service.
Geocoding facilitates effective analysis and visualization of spatial data, revealing geographic patterns and trends that inform strategic decision-making. It allows businesses to overlay address-based data on maps, making it easier to spot trends and make data-driven decisions.
Whether building a consumer-facing application or developing an internal analytics tool, product managers and engineers rely on accurate geocoding as an essential component. We conducted an analysis comparing SafeGraph’s geocoding to OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google in the Little Rock area to assess precision and reliability.
SafeGraph Data:
OSM & Google Data:
These outliers indicate that some OSM and Google geocodes could return neighboring buildings or businesses, leading to potential inaccuracies.
SafeGraph's geocoding and POI data are meticulously curated to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information.
Our Places dataset is updated every month, capturing the dynamic nature of the physical world and ensuring you always have the most current data.
SafeGraph employs rigorous data validation methods to maintain high data quality:
Once all of the data is ingested, we go through a rigorous de-duping and merging process to make sure the dataset is clean and ready for use.
Accurate geocoding is essential for a wide range of business applications, including marketing, logistics, urban planning, navigation, and retail analysis. High-quality geocoding data ensures precise mapping, efficient routing, effective spatial analysis, and more, which are critical for making informed decisions and optimizing operations. While there are various providers out there, evaluating factors such as accuracy, coverage, and data updates can help businesses choose the data provider that best meets their needs and supports their specific use cases.
Placekey’s Geocoding Service
Placekey recently released a Geocoder that converts POIs and addresses into specific location coordinates (latitude and longitude). As discussed in this blog, accurate coordinates are essential for maintaining precise address records, performing mapping, logistics, and business analysis. The Placekey Geocoder offers rooftop accuracy, ensuring the highest level of precision for your geocoding needs. Geocodes can be easily obtained by making a simple API request.
The Placekey Geocoder has a generous free tier of 10,000 per day and allows you to store the geocodes received forever.
SafeGraph Places is a comprehensive dataset composed of high-quality POIs, leveraged by thousands of organizations globally who trust the data as their primary source of truth. It includes geospatial attributes such as address strings, geographic coordinates, brand affiliations, open/close dates, and NAICS/category codes.
