OSM doesn't support/understand the street numbering scheme used in my country. If I rewrite my address in the format OSM thinks I should be using, then at least it can find the street I am on. But I'm not going to write addresses differently just for one website...especially when Google Maps understands how we write addresses.
Hi, I'm a long time OSMer, and I'd like to help. OSM has a flexible tagging system, so it could be possible to map your addresses the way they should be. You shouldn't have to shoe-horn things into a schema that doesn't fit you.
Addresses here are written like "220/9 xo viet nghe tinh", which means "go to 220 on Xo Viet Nghe Tinh and turn into the alley there, go to #9 in the alley".
Typing "220/9 xo viet nghe tinh" into OSM results in "No results found". Instead I have to write "hem 220/9 xo viet nghe tinh" for it to find the road; no one writes it that way.
A house address would be "220/9/14 xo viet nghe tinh" meaning "go to 220 on Xo Viet Nghe Tinh and turn into the alley there; go to #9 and turn into the next alley you find there; then go to house #14".
The only way OSM can figure things out is if I write it like "14 hem 220/9 xo viet nghe tinh"
Nominatim processes OSM data, associating items of interest with features like town boundaries that enclose the item, or place markers that are nearby, and then is also a fairly pedantic search interface for that data.
Photon takes the data that Nominatim generates and sticks a more flexible search on top of it.
Checking for/creating an issue for Nominatim describing the address format that doesn't work well would be a useful thing to do, as global support is a goal there.
