Create Locator vs. Create Feature Locator

Question

I'm wondering if anyone has any use cases, tips, or otherwise to help me better understand the pros and cons of using Create Locator vs. Create Feature Locator when working with locators that use place names to geocode instead of addresses?

Create Locator includes a POI role that seems similar to locating a feature based on a name, but when filling out the parameters it still asks for various address input fields. Create Feature Locator seems to behave the most similarly to the old Single Field style from the ArcMap days since it only asks for one field.

If it helps add context, my specific use case is with making a locator to search for address and city park names in a Survey123 survey map question. I was able to set up a composite locator that uses an address points dataset (pretty obvious that it should be an address locator) and a feature locator that uses a parks dataset (ended up doing a feature locator using just the name field). But I'd also love to learn more about other use cases for when to use one vs. the other kind of locator.

Shana Britt · Accepted Answer

@JohnNergeBrooklynPark If you use the Create Locator tool to build a POI role locator for the city park names you have the option to include the address of the park, which would get returned with the park name. If you have different categories of parks like skate parks, dog parks, regional parks you can search on the category name and get all of the parks that are in that category. An example of this with some test inputs can be found in this tutorial, https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geocoding/tutorial-create-a-locator-with-more-than-one-dataset-of-same-role.htm.  You have different search options that are available for the POI role as illustrated in the following role description https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geocoding/introduction-to-locator-roles.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_CE2B24E7AC144C71B645937363ECBCE5. You can include the POI role in a multirole locator along with your address point data using the PointAddress role you are already using, you would not be able to include the feature role locator in the multirole locator. If you use the Create Locator tool you can include custom output fields that contain other attribute info that you want returned with the park name result. This option is available in the Create Feature Locator tool starting in ArcGIS Pro 3.2.