Google has announced a new Geocoding Web Service which contains a number of improvements over its previous version including the following:
- A flatter response format for address components that is easier to parse
- The ability to tag an address component with multiple types
- Both full names and abbreviations for countries and states
- Differentiation between rooftop and interpolated geocoder results
- Both the bounding box and recommended viewport for each result
The geocoding web service enables pre-caching of geocoded results for commonly used addresses in your application. Results are cached on your server and any additional requests for these addresses will be served out of the cache rather than having to be geocoded each time.
Other items of interest from the announcement
- Google also announce the deprecation of its previous geocoding service.
- Requests no longer require a Maps API key
- CSV output not supported
- 2,500 requests per day from a single IP address
- Service must be used in conjunction with maps generated by Google Maps APIs or Google Earth API
