| 1.3. | Choose your Address Columns |
First decide whether you will be doing a structured or unstructured geocoding
•Unstructured Geocoding: All address data in one column
•Structured Geocoding: Address columns are split into separate columns e.g. street, suburb, city, province (Recommended, Structured Geocoding will often give much more accurate results)
To Choose your Address Columns for Unstructured Geocoding:
The address field is considered to be a full textual address search. Click the ‘address columns’ button (1) choose the first column ‘Address’ (2) and then select the column that has all your address data e.g. ‘Site Address’ in the example below (3)
To choose your address columns for Structured Geocoding:
Choose each address column. For example if roads (1) are located in my ‘Street Address’ column in my data (2), I will select this column for roads. Continue to do the same for the remaining address columns (3)
Notes on Structured Geocoding:
•You don’t have to set every address column. For example you can choose to leave out Ext or Suffix, if this is not an important match
•If you have address data in the same column e.g. number and road, you can select both to be searched for in the same column.
•If you have data mixed between two columns e.g. suburbs in town column and towns in suburb column, you can set the address columns to search both columns
•The more structured your address data, the better the accuracy of your results
Notes on Crossings:
•If you are geocoding corners or crossings, make sure to set the Crossing column (1) to also search your column that has your road names e.g. Street Address in the example below (2). So both your Road and Crossing columns will search the column that has your road names. You can tick off the Number column (3) when doing corner matches, as it will not be required.
