how to get latitude and longitude for an address WITHOUT using Google's Geocoding services

Question

I would like to get the latitude and longitude of an address. Is there any way to do this without using Google's geocoding API?

I want to use tilemill to display my addresses on my map. As far as I understand using latitude and longitude obtained from Google prevents me from using them on tile mill.

So what should I do to get these.

Thanks

Answer 1

Correct. Kudos for honoring TOS.

There are other services which perform geocoding. To name a few: Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest, Nominatim. However, these have various Terms of Service restrictions which are similar to Google's that may also apply. If not that, then there are query limits. There's also USC WebGIS, but its demos are frequently down and the service is reportedly intermittent.

The way around the limitations of a lot of these free services is probably to use a commercial service. There are several out there, and each one works a little differently. Some will search for addresses and make a best guess (or approximate) the results -- this is what Google and other search services do.

Others will take an address, suspected to be real, and actually verify it, then geocode it. This leads to potentially more helpful and accurate results because the address is guaranteed to be correct and standardized. In the US, this is called CASS™ processing (though not all vendors will geocode). It's useful for creating perimeters on maps (given a geocoding precision value) and for showing coordinates in the right place instead of a second-best address hundreds of miles away.

One such geocoding service is LiveAddress API. (I work at SmartyStreets.) The demos show how the geocoding works, but it's flexible so you can choose how to implement it with tilemill. Further, there aren't query limits with LiveAddress because the system will scale up based on demand. And you won't pay for addresses which don't validate, which helps prevent abuse.

The choice is yours, depending on your needs. Do a little research and you ought to find something good. Hope this is of some help!