Inconsistency of Geocoding result

Question

Hi everyone,

I've encountered an issue when I am geocoding a dataset (~150k records) with arcpy and streetmap premium.

I run it 4 times and set it match only at 100 score.

I got 4 different numbers of matched records : 105974, 105976, 105977, 105979

And meantime, the total number of records stats the same.

I wonder if anyone had similar experience.

Thanks in advance.

OH · Answer

I'll check out the the Time Out option.  I've been having pretty bad performance issues with recent versions of ArcGIS on my systems, so that may be making the problem even worse.

I ended up having to run the unmatched addresses through the rematch process 4 or 5 times before it stopped finding new matches.  Wasn't a lot in the end (about 60 matches out of 20k+ addresses), but it is disturbing that the same address might have different results depending on when you run it.

RuiyangLi · Answer

Hi Otto,

Based on the information provided by a ESRI Geocode team member, it is because of a hidden input variable 'Time Out' setting in the geocoder. The program will stop searching for a record after certain time. There will be less chance if I increase the 'Time Out'. But it will take significantly longer time for the program to run. So it's really a trade-off.

Now our standard practice is first create a unique address table, and then run the geocoder. Then run the 'leftover' records through the geocoder again. It usually solve the problem.

OH · Answer

This is still a problem.

I only noticed because I happened to have the same address multiple times in an input dataset.

One of those copies got geocoded successfully, the other one did not.

This is completely unacceptable behavior.  ArcGIS should return the exact same result for a given input (especially if those inputs are only occuring 30 seconds apart).