Geocoding is the process of assigning a location, usually in the form of coordinate values, to an address by comparing the descriptive location elements in the address to those present in the reference material.

Basic Principles Address Locators Applications Database Schema API Comparison Samples

Geocoding, also called address matching, can also be defined as the process of plotting geographic locations (identifiers) for data that is stored in tabular format. One can use geocoding to plot the geographic positions of a set of addresses in a customer database or one can plot Latitude and Longitude points recorded from a GPS unit. Thus, Geocoding requires a database of properly formed address, a database of streets and a set of rules for matching the addresses to the streets.

Addresses come in many forms, ranging from the common address format of house number followed by the street name and succeeding information to other location descriptions such as postal zone or census tract. In essence, an address includes any type of information that distinguishes a place. For more information on addresses, see "What is an address?".