A geocode, or geocode address, is the latitude and longitude coordinates of a specified location on the planet (Earth). Let's take the Empire State Building: the address is 20 W 34th St, New York, NY 10118
and latitude 40.74861, and longitude -73.9852 is the geocode.
There are lots of uses for a geocode, and getting a geocode for a list of addresses is super simple.
First, go to Smarty.com, or click the link in the description. Then at the top hover over Resources, and under Demos select Bulk Address Validation.
Select whether you’re looking up US addresses, or international addresses. In this example, we’ll stick with US addresses.
For step 2 paste in your addresses, just make sure to include a header row. It is possible to type it in manually, but that would take forever. Feel free to download the example file if you’re curious about the best formatting to use. The free tool will allow you to do up to 10 address lookups at a time.
Once your addresses are squared away select "Process My List". The bottom box will populate with your new validated and geocoded address fields. Then all you've got to do is copy and paste that bad boy into your spreadsheet.
It's important to note that if your addresses were all in one column with the components not broken out, you'll need to split the new data with a comma set as the delimiter. You can do that in your spreadsheet by clicking Data, Text to Columns, and then setting comma as the delimiter.
In your results sheet, columns P and Q will now have a latitude and longitude value. In column R is listed the precision of these geocodes. If you look up addresses for free it gives you Zip9 precision, meaning accurate down to the block or street. This can be very useful to find districts, zones, or general information about an address.
If you’re looking for more precise geocoding, you can purchase a rooftop geocoding license and then do your search again, this time with your license pasted into the license field. Now when I get the results, in the geocoding column the numbers are a tad different, and the precision is on the rooftop.
Rooftop geocoding is the most precise geocoding out there and can be super useful to insurance, zoning, legal, and other industries.
If you have questions about batch geocoding, leave them in the comments.
Yodel.
