Geocoding a list of cities without zip codes

Question

Hey folks,

I have a list of a little over 900 US cities with states, but no zip codes that I need to geocode. I ran the list through the geocoder that comes with ESRI 10.1 Business Analyst desktop, and all I get are 0s for lat/lon. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Wayne
Wayne Kocina
 
Office: 303-731-1416
Mobile: 303-818-2806
Email: wayne@GeoWize.com

nilsbrunelet · Answer

Hey folks,

I have a list of a little over 900 US cities with states, but no zip codes that I need to geocode.

Our free converters/geocoders http://www.inquiron.com/online-file-converter/ support cities without ZIP codes.

Our system recognizes around 121,000 cities globally, around 16,000 of which are in the US.

Simply upload a spreadsheet with a "City" column, a "US State" column, and a third "Country" column and this will return a new spreadsheet with added latitude and longitude columns.

Hope this helps.

ScottWhittington · Answer

There is an address locator that is supplied with Business Analyst that can be used to geocode only city/state locations.  Open the address locator manager and click the add button to add a new locator.  Navigate to the following location C:\ArcGIS\Business Analyst\US_2012\Data\Geocoding Data.  There you will see a city/state address locator that can be added and used for geocoding.  Remember you must have Business Analyst installed to use this locator.  Also the directory will be different if a default install was not conducted.

Scott.

Jason_RobinsonRobinson · Answer

Hey folks,

I have a list of a little over 900 US cities with states, but no zip codes that I need to geocode. I ran the list through the geocoder that comes with ESRI 10.1 Business Analyst desktop, and all I get are 0s for lat/lon. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Wayne
Wayne Kocina

Office: 303-731-1416
Mobile: 303-818-2806
Email: wayne@GeoWize.com

Wayne,

Unfortunately the USA Geocoding Service (composite locator) does not geocode to the city/state.  I believe only stand-alone Address Coder 10.1 (ArcGIS Engine) has the capability.

As an alternative you might try using Standard Geographies and select Cities and Towns and use the 'Import from a List' but the effectiveness would depend on the naming conventions lining up naturally.

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/#/Standard_Geographies/000z000000s0000000/

Regards,
Jason R.