Geocoding

Putting a name to a point on the earth, or a point to a name. Forward geocoding turns a written address into a latitude and a longitude; reverse geocoding does the opposite, and answers what is at a pair of numbers.

Both directions are the same question asked from opposite ends, so one field takes both. Anything that reads as two numbers is treated as a coordinate, everything else as something written.

• Paste a coordinate pair, latitude first: 52.5163, 13.3777. A comma, a semicolon or a plain space all separate the two, and degree signs are ignored.
• Or write an address. Pariser Platz 1, Berlin and 350 5th Avenue, New York both work, because the house number is read at either end of the street.
• The part after the last comma is the place to search in. Without a comma the whole line is taken as the name of a town.
• Spelling does not have to be exact. Hoeninger Weg, Köln finds Höninger Weg, and Hauptstr finds Hauptstraße.
• A reverse lookup answers with the nearest address and the nearest named place, each with how far away it is. In a city the address is the answer; in open country the distance tells you it is not.
• The dice looks up a random example.

Every result says how far it is from the point you asked about. That number is the whole answer to how much the result is worth.

Coverage is not even. Some places are mapped house by house and others are not mapped that way at all.

• It does not rank by fame or population, beyond preferring a city to a hamlet of the same name.
• It does not search while you type. One query, one answer.
• Where your line fits more than one address, all of them are listed rather than one being chosen.
• It does not show a map. That is deliberate, see below.
• The data is a snapshot of OpenStreetMap, refreshed four times a year.