Geocoding Web Service

The MapQuest Platform: Geocoding Web Service allows you to access MapQuest geo-location data directly over HTTP without having to go through a language-specific SDK. Requests can be submitted as Key-Value pairs, JSON, XML and more. Responses do not have to match the request-type; mix-and-match to fit your development needs.

Web Service Resources

Geocoding Web Service Documentation

Instructions, code samples, and demos all combined in easy-to-follow, easy-to-use documentation.

Geocoding Web Service Forums

Discuss and collaborate with other Geocoding Web Service developers.

Features

Address Geocode function

Provide either a single line address, or an address broken down into its component parts (5-line) and receive back potential addresses and lat/lngs, in order of confidence.

Reverse Geocode function

Provide a Latitude and Longitude, and receive back the known address information of that location.

Batch Geocode function

Geocode up to 100 locations at once in a single batch function call.

Reflected User-provided values

Add your own data into the location object on your request, and receive it back in the response. Great for helping you maintain state in your application, and for keeping your own information about the location packaged together for your application.

ViewPort Biasing

If you provide a Map Bounds as part of your geocode call, ambiguity results within the map bounds will be moved to the top of the results list.

ccTLD Biasing (Country Code Domains)

If you don't provide a country for the address, the country will default to the domain of the web address making the geocoding request. For example, if you make a request from http://www.myAwesomeSite.co.fr, we will default the country to France unless you tell us differently.

Thumbnail Ambiguity maps

Each ambiguity result can return a static map URL that provides a thumbnail image of the ambiguous location, if you wish to display these to end-users for some context when disambiguating.

Delimited File Output

For any of the geocoding service functions, you can specify outFormat=file and a delimiter= of Comma(,) Pipe(|) Colon(:) or semi-colon(;). The service will then return a delimited text file including a header row. This should be especially useful for the batch geocoding function.