I raised the issue of Canadian post code support some time ago and some changes appear to have been made to Nominatim to use a North American site for Canadian post code and I think for the full US postal services Zip code.<br>
<br>Try a long US zip code and see what happens.<br><br>Cheerio John <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 30 December 2010 15:33, Richard Welty <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rwelty@averillpark.net">rwelty@averillpark.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
[this got no response on talk-us, so i'm trying talk]<br>
<br>
i'm trying to understand some of what's going on with Nominatim and<br>
US places.<br>
<br>
specifically, in trying to look up a local road name here in NY, i'm
curious<br>
about why Nominatim does what it does, and whether there are changes<br>
that need to be made in the map data, or changes perhaps in how
Nominatim<br>
interprets the map data.<br>
<br>
the specific example i'm using here is Biittig Road in the Town of
Sand Lake,<br>
NY:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=42.61507&lon=-73.59512&zoom=15&layers=M" target="_blank">http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=42.61507&lon=-73.59512&zoom=15&layers=M</a><br>
<br>
postal addresses on Biittig will be in Averill Park, NY. this is how
a normal<br>
user would probably try to look it up. it fails.<br>
<br>
what works are either of these two strings: "Biittig Road, NY" and<br>
"Biittig Road, Sliters, NY"<br>
<br>
Sliters is a tiny unincorporated hamlet a mile or so south of
Biittig Road, and it<br>
is probably the nearest such from the gnis import. it's not really
correct for any<br>
postal addressed based lookups, and i think very few would ever try
to look it up<br>
that way. they'll try "Biittig Road, Averill Park, NY" get nothing
and decide the<br>
whole thing sucks. we should probably attempt to provide a slightly
better<br>
user experience.<br>
<br>
the displayed results from Nominatim are curious as well:<br>
<br>
<span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Times;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:14px;text-align:left">Unclassified Road<span> </span><a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/?minlon=-73.6051635742188&minlat=42.612548828125&maxlon=-73.5850830078125&maxlat=42.6175994873047" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 255);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">Biittig
Road, Sliters, Saratoga, 12018, $B%K%e!<%h!<%/=#(B, United States of
America</a></span></span><br>
<br>
I'm not at all clear on why Saratoga is showing up at all. Saratoga
County is a bit<br>
north and west of here; Biittig Road is in Rensselaer County (note
that i did just<br>
fix some county border issues with Rensselaer County, it was
mislabled<br>
Franklin County when it was imported, and the admin_level was
missing<br>
from one segment. i need to go look at the eastern border with
Massachusetts,<br>
i think that's wrong for Rensselaer County as well. i did these
lookups before i<br>
made the corrections, and i don't know how rapidly changes like this
impact<br>
Nominatim.)<br>
<br>
can someone involved in the Nominatim comment on this, and what
needs to be<br>
done either on the map data side or the Nominatim side to get
results that<br>
are more consistent with what an ordinary user-off-the-street might
be expecting?<br>
<br>
richard<br>
<br>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>