[Geocoding] Using Nominatim to geocode Toronto addresses

[Brian Quinion]

On 28 May 2013 20:33, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

Anything with floor information, or thing that are not in the address
will fail.  Nominatim isn't good at dropping junk information.  That
includes the extra 'st E' in '95 Front Street East St E'

However 2 of your examples work fine which makes me think you have
other problems as well:

http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?q=255+Spadina+Rd%2C+Toronto%2C+Ontario%2C+Canada&viewbox=-79.42%2C43.73%2C-79.4%2C43.71

http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?q=1451+Avenue+Rd%2C+Toronto%2C+Ontario%2C+Canada

--
 Brian