[Geocoding] Using Nominatim to geocode Toronto addresses

[Stewart C. Russell]

Hi,

I was trying to use Nominatim (Mapquest's server) to geocode the event
locations for last weekend's Doors Open Toronto(XML feed:
http://wx.toronto.ca/inter/culture/doorsopen.nsf/DOT_open_data.xml)
using Geopy's OpenMapQuest geocoder. The addresses are clearly
human-entered; here are some examples:

  * 255 Spadina Rd
  * 1 King St W Floor : Lobby, 2nd, 12th
  * 350 King St W Floor : 4
  * 95 Front Street East St E

Even after adding ", Toronto, Ontario, Canada" to the query, I'd still
get unreliable results. Some of them returned no results. Some returned
obviously wrong results (such as just under 1/5 of the addresses were
returned as "King's College Circle", even simple ones like '1451 Avenue
Rd').

Toronto's got some pretty good address data in OSM. Am I naïve expecting
Nominatim to be able to find locations for hand-keyed addresses? How can
I improve the addressing so that Nominatim finds things better?

thanks,
 Stewart

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