How to convert an address to a latitude/longitude?

Question

How would I go about converting an address or city to a latitude/longitude? Are there commercial outfits I can \"rent\" this service from? This would be used in a commercial

Answer 1

You want a geocoding application. These are available either online or as an application backend.

• Online applications:

  • Google has a geocoding API

• Backend applications:

  • GeoStan

Answer 2

Yahoo! Maps Web Services - Geocoding API accurately geocodes UK postcodes, unlike Google's API.

Unfortunately yahoo has deprecated this service, you could visit http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/ for yahoo's service

Answer 3

Virtual Earth does it. There is also a web service at geocoder.us

Answer 4

you are asking about Geocoder. Google provide an API for this. so does another provider for this.

you can see the demo of implementation in My Current Location .net

Answer 5

You can use Microsoft's MapPoint Web Services.

I created a blog entry on how to convert an address to a GeoCode (lat/long).

Answer 6

Thought I would add one more to the list. Texas A&M has a pretty decently priced service here: http://geoservices.tamu.edu/Services/Geocode/

A good option if you have a pretty large set of addresses to geocode and don't want to pat 10k to Google or Microsoft. We still ended up using the returned data in a Google Map.