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"St. Louis, MO" is not found "Saint Louis, MO" is, though you have no data. No one from St. Louis would type it out.

• ericd 17y ago
  Is there a compelling reason not to drop in Google's geocoding service and just do a lat/long proximity search? (I'm assuming you have the locations of the installers in lat/long form)
  • jws 17y ago
    Usually it is dollars. If you are going to Geocode more than a handful of locations they need to be paid.
    • ericd 17y ago
      The free limit is 15,000/day/IP - if your users use your key using the GMaps javascript library, I don't believe that counts against your server's quota, since it's coming from a distinct IP per request. 15k/day is a lot of installers... Edit - And my reply wasn't meant to question you, you just illuminated the issue well.
  • jhouck 17y ago
    my understanding was that this would violate google's terms (unless we are willing/able to pay), but maybe i'm mistaken. we use google's geocoder when we display data on maps, but i thought it was prohibited to use the geocoder for other purposes (e.g. geo-based data at ohmji.com/solar/san-francisco not rendered on a map).