Following on last week’s post about our new account dashboard usage charts, I’m pleased to share a few other product updates with you

Website move

Yesterday we moved our website from geocoder.opencagedata.com to just opencagedata.com. The geocoder subdomain was a bit clunky remnant from our early days when we did other things besides just geocoding. All old URLs should redirect, all of our tests are passing, etc, but if you should happen to see any problems please let us know

API changes

As you might have noticed in our API Change Log we’re recently rolled out a few improvements to our geocoding API.

  • First up, we <added a new backend geocoder for the Australian G-NAF dataset, which should be a meaningful improvement for our Australian friends. One tip though, please do follow our best practice of using the optional countrycode parameter, as it helps us route to country-specific geocoders like this.

  • Secondly, in the case that a geocoding result is a road (by which I mean the _type key of the componentsportion of the result has value road, we now also try to add a `road_type’ key that has values like those generally used in OpenStreetMap. Unfortunately this isn’t always possible, but - as ever - we do the best we can with imperfect inputs. Many thanks to all the OSM contributors around the world who are adding this information, also to the user who suggested this improvement.

Here’s an example of the response you will get when you geocode the coordinates 51.39134, 10.10919

      "components": {
        "ISO_3166-1_alpha-2": "DE",
        "_type": "road",
        "continent": "Europe",
        "country": "Germany",
        "country_code": "de",
        "county": "Landkreis Eichsfeld",
        "political_union": "European Union",
        "postcode": "37308",
        "road": "A 38",
        "road_reference": "A 38",
        "road_type": "motorway",
        "state": "Thuringia",
        "town": "Heilbad Heiligenstadt"
      },

As promised on our GDPR / data protection page, we want to update you anytime things change with how we use or share your data.

  • Previously if you visited our pricing page we were passing your IP address to a third-party IP-to-geo lookup service so we could set the prices to the correct currency for your location. We no longer pass your info to a third-party.

  • Previously we used the service SendGrid for sending transactional emails. We have now switched to Postmark with whom we have a data processing agreement in place. As before, we only ever send you transactional emails (payment confirmation, password reminders, etc).

As ever, the best way to keep track of what we’re up to in quasi realtime is by following @opencagedata on twitter where we regularly post updates and re-tweet the occasional bit of geo-goodness.

happy geocoding,

Ed