Geocoding Etc.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Yahoo Maps Goes Global with International Support

Update: I guess I jumped the gun a bit in assuming the international support went further then it did. It looks like only major roads are available internationally, and thus geocoding support is limited. Lets hope that they update again soon enough, aerial photos aren't much good if you don't know where to look!

Original Post:
Yahoo dropped a bombshell today announcing international data coverage support, a new and improved developer API, and the addition of aerial photos. You can read more about it here.

It might take me awhile to sort out all the areas that are covered by the new geocoder, but so far I have tested:
  • France
  • England
  • China
  • Australia
  • Japan
  • Germany
  • Etc!

For me tracking down addresses in all those countries to test wasn't easy, and Yahoo hasn't come forward with the full list yet so it might take awhile to figure out what the coverage really is. The great news is that the batch geocoder was automatically updated with support for international addresses when Yahoo made the change. Please post any feedback here.

I should be able to fairly quickly update the other pages to reflect the other updates which include aerial photo support. This is really exciting!

posted by pkh at 11:15 AM

5 Comments:

  • That's cool. How about modifying your HTML link to Google Maps to be based on the "Lat/Long" coordinates instead of the address. Then the link will show that addresses location. Or, you could just change the display of Lat/Long to "Lat/Lon: XXXX XXXX" instead of "Lat: XXXX, Long: XXXX" which would make it easy to cut/paste the coordinates into other mapping tools (like Google Maps/Earth).

    By Anonymous Frank Taylor, at 1:22 PM  

  • Addresses in Switzerland seem to work also!

    -MQ

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:07 PM  

  • I probably should have read this before I posted ("bad blogger, bad!"):

    "We have pretty good "city" level geocoding ... with lots of alternate
    names. Try "Kyev", "Kiev", "Stalingrad", "Volgograd", "Roma",
    "Constantinople", "Alemania", "Leningrad", "Saint Petersburg",
    "Petrograd", "Sankt Petersburg". Street level geocoding isn't yet
    available outside US and Canada, as it is not needed to support this
    version of our maps." - Alan Brown of Yahoo

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yws-maps/message/2186

    By Blogger pkh, at 3:05 PM  

  • A shame we haven't got real geocoding support for France, just at city level.

    By Blogger Emmanuel Idé, at 4:45 AM  

  • This is excellent news. Though city-level geocoding is not ideal.

    For people in the UK, we have an UK geocoder at www.isharemaps.com. This geocodes to postcode level. You can easily integrate with Yahoo Maps using our JavaScript functions, or you can use our geocoding Web Service.

    By Anonymous Geocoding UK, at 6:16 AM  

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