
Search up to 10K addresses with free holiday batch geocoding service - dianashk
http://holidaysearch.mapzen.com
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gkop
How is MapZen's international geocoding? I couldn't find info on their website
saying how good their coverage is of different countries and languages.

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dianashk
It's built on open data sets, including OpenStreetMap and OpenAddresses. In
populated areas coverage is really good. Thanks to OpenAddresses, several
countries have full address coverage. You can see the coverage map on
openaddresses.io. New data gets added as these open data sources grow.

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toomuchtodo
Why does OpenAddress need to exist separately from OSM? Can address geocoding
data not be properly represented in OSM?

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randyme
OpenAddresses is a directory of publicly available address lists provided by
government agencies at various levels. It's designed to be bulk imported by
machine.

Many addresses exist in OSM. But there's a preference from the OSM community
that data be entered by users familiar with their areas, that they can verify
on the ground. Imports have happened in OSM, such as the controversial TIGER
import in the US years ago, and the NYC building dataset more recently. But
these require a lot of effort and attention to manage well.

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toomuchtodo
So could OpenAddresses be merged into OSM at some point? Would that make
sense?

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dianashk
It's not out of the question, however there are many obstacles to overcome,
such as licensing, validation, and the fact that the OSM community generally
insists on manually entered data.

I've heard many folks push for consolidation of various open data projects, so
they aren't "competing" for contributions. However the reality is that they
are currently very different and each serves to bridge a very specific gap.

In the meantime, it makes a lot of sense for projects relying on open data to
pull all of these sources in, as Mapzen Search is doing, to ensure the best
possible coverage.

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iask
Never heard of mapzen until this post. Looks pretty cool. I am always
skeptical of the lifetime of these service providers. I've seen quite a few
come and go...and spent countless hours adopting replacement.

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dianashk
Great point! As developers, we've all been there. Mapzen's mission is to
create services that outlive the brand/company. Everything we do is open
source and easy to stand up on your own.

Pelias, the project powering our Search service is written entirely in node.js
+ Elasticsearch, to make it accessible to the largest number of developers,
because JavaScript.

We also host an instance of Pelias to make the service accessible for those
that can't/won't run their own.

More details
[here]([https://mapzen.com/projects/search](https://mapzen.com/projects/search)).

