Not able to geolocate an address given by openstreetmap itself

General talk
1

Hi,
I use nominatim to geolocate a spot. I select one of the addresses among the given results. I save the full (long) address’ name in order to retreive it on map display. Using that same saved address to geolocate the spot again, openstreetmap api is not able to find any result !
Can you tell me what I do wrong ?
Thanks !

2

Bump. Is my question twisted ?

3

Maybe you should give an example.

4

Hi! Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:
All right so here is the concrete error case. I go on nominatim web page and type in the address I’m looking for (https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=621+avenue+centrale+grenoble). It gives me only one result which is a more detailed address. I copy paste that same address in nominatim input field, then it is not able to find any result (find itself somehow). Is that normal ?

5

When I click on the link Nominatim shows a box with
“Présidence Université Grenoble Alpes, 621, Avenue Centrale, Médiat Rhône-Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Grenoble, Isère, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpen, Metropolitanes Frankreich, 38400, Frankreich (Building)”
When I paste that text I also find nothing. When I change it to

“Présidence Université Grenoble Alpes, 621, Avenue Centrale, Médiat Rhône-Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Grenoble, Isère, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpen”
it works, when I add the country like this
“Présidence Université Grenoble Alpes, 621, Avenue Centrale, Médiat Rhône-Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Grenoble, Isère, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpen,Frankreich” it also works.
It seems that the postal code 38400 causes problems.

6

Thanks for taking the time to find the cause of the problem. That said, I’m not sure what to do now. Does that means that somehow Openstreetmap is not reliable ? I can systematically remove postal codes from addresses selected by users; but maybe in another case, another part of the address will cause nomatim not to geolocate properly…

7

I suggest you take this issue to the geocoding mailing list. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/geocoding
The authors of Nominatim read there and are probably better suited to work this out.

8

I wouldn’t say that OpenStreetMap is not reliable. Nominatim is a separate component, which might include design decisions which you do not like or there might be bugs…
Furthermore the Nominatim server on nominatim.openstreetmap.org imports external databases (e.g. Tiger in places where there is no OSM data), not all Nominatim instances will have the same underlying data.

Other OpenStreetMap-based geocoders might not have the same problem or exhibit other quirks.

So basically what I want to say, OpenStreetMap is “just” data, how this data is used is up to the data consumers (such as Nominatim).
How those programs react to certain input is “their” problem, not necessarily a data problem

9

Ok, I have taken the issue to the geocoding mailing list. @escada, you’re right the problem seems uterly related to Nominatim behaviour. For now I have no other choice than checking different versions of the address (once gathered), before saving it in the db (temp fix).