Data Loading and Geocoding: Part II

In our last blog post on data loading and geocoding, we looked at how to load data into PolicyMap, and saw that the automatic geocoder isn’t always able to find every address. In the data loader, these points have red circles. So how do you get rid of these circles?

You have a few options.

The first option is very easy: do nothing. If you’re uploading 5,000 addresses to get a sense of the density and distribution of the points (you want to know, say, where are there a lot of foreclosures?), it might not matter that some won’t appear. Even with incomplete coverage, you’ll still get a good sense of what you’re looking for, and you won’t spend extra time hunting down addresses.

But maybe you do want more complete coverage.

The second option, then, is to fix individual addresses.

Here, we have the Spring Grove Hospital Center, which can’t be located because its address is missing the address number. But it turns out that for this particular hospital, it’s easy to find. I looked it up on Google, and it turns out its address is 55 Wade Avenue. So I can just click on the address field in the data loader, and type in 55. Instantly, it’s able to find the address.

That’s another tool you can use to maximize your match rate. But what do you do when you can’t get an address, but know where the point is? Stay tuned for the next installment in the series.