topic Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

mpboyle — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:22:12 GMT

We have a composite geocode service that is not properly locating address points. If I enter an address within the search bar of one of our apps built with WAB, the address will show in the suggestions, but if I click on it, I will be taken to somewhere that is not the address that's listed. And, in some cases, the address is not listed at all in the suggestions box.

There are other locators within the composite locator that are working, for example, one of the locators allows the ability to search by parcel number. This locator is working fine. Another allows you to search by place name, and again, this one is working fine.

I have already deleted and re-created the address point locator (with Suggestions enabled), and re-published the service. Still getting the same results where addresses are not locating properly.

System Details

ArcGIS Desktop 10.3
ArcGIS Server 10.3
Address locator style = US Single House with Subaddress

Below are a couple sample searches. The first 2 screenshots show that when searching for an address, it appears that the suggestion is finding the address, but will take you to the wrong location. The second 2 screenshots demonstrate that the locator using place locations is working.

Any ideas what the issue is with our address locator and why it is not working properly?...why it's not locating at the correct location?

1) Searching for 1801 Whispering Pines Ct SW Cedar Rapids IA --- shows in the suggestions box.

2) Search result when I click on the suggestion. I'm taken to 1720 Whispering Pines Ct SW.

1) Searching for Linn County Community Services Building --- shows in suggestions box. Search fails.

2) Search result takes me to the correct location. Search works.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

ShanaBritt — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:19:38 GMT

Matthew:

Do you get the same behavior with the Subaddress point locator in ArcMap that you do with the published service in the web app? Does the same behavior occur when the point locator is based on the US Address - Single House style and published to ArcGIS Server?

-Shana

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

mpboyle — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:27:52 GMT

sbritt-esristaff‌,

The locator seems to work fine in ArcMap, but not within a web application. We have found that using the same locator published to a 10.4.1 Server works as expected, i.e. locates the address correctly.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

WilliamRice — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 20:20:33 GMT

Matthew,

I had a similar issue with invalid address suggestions returned by the Web App Builder Search Widget when used with a custom Geocoding Service that used Address Points as one of its match sources. Having a "Suggest" option that returns addresses that do not exist in the underlying match source is just not helpful. So, I do not use the "Suggest" option with my Geocoding services.

I submitted Case# #01810750 "Web App Builder Search Widget provides suggestions that do not exist the source data" on 7/30/2016. The enhancement "#ENH-000098678 [Enhancement] Add options in the Create address Locator tool to include parameters to alter the index (xml) allowing full address strings, custom names, or other information to be provided rather than the default index" was submitted based on this case. The above enhancement includes the following related bug: Related bug : BUG-000094346 - The 'suggest' operation of the REST application programming interface (API) returns a suggestion for invalid street addresses that do not exist.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

ShanaBritt — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 15:43:28 GMT

William:

The suggestions that are returned for geocoding services are only suggestions for the street name and do not include suggestions for the house number as a suggestion index for the house number is not generated when the address locator is built. The house number suggestion that you see could be any house number that is valid for features that has the same street name. If the geocode service is based on the Single House Subaddress style, you will get suggestions for the subaddress, but the subaddress suggestions are not correlated to the house number. You would also get subaddress suggestions that are valid for the street name, for example, if you had point features that represented 123 e main st with subaddresses A-F and 150 e main st with subaddresses A-D, then typed in the address "150 e main st " to get suggestions for the subaddress , the subaddress F would show as a suggestion because it exists at 123 e main st. This is because the subaddress is not correlated to the house number, but F is considered a valid subaddress for the street name suggestion of "e main st". At version 10.5 if you select the invalid subaddress is selected in the map viewer no results are returned and if used in ArcGIS Pro, no candidates will be returned in the results list of the Locate pane. This behavior is as designed.

BUG-000090968 - US Single House Subaddress locator shows suggestions for houses with units that don't exist.
BUG-000094346 - The 'suggest' operation of the REST application programming interface (API) returns a suggestion for invalid street addresses that do not exist.
https://developers.arcgis.com/rest/geocode/api-reference/geocoding-suggest.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_F4600031F2F44E44ACE0989325BC9E0D
BUG-000100204 - When the Suggest operation is enabled on an address locator geocode service with over 1,000,000 records, the geocode service will suggest addresses that do not exist. Creating an address locator—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

-Shana

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 20:19:28 GMT

Unfortunately i can confirm these all still exist at 10.5.1

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 13:03:12 GMT

Support has confirmed. Features, not bugs. Will not be addressed.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

OliviaDeSimone — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 14:31:01 GMT

I am running into similar issues:

1) Address locator set up on General - Gazetteer will suggest the correct address but once you click on it, it takes you to a different address and the suggestion has suddenly changes. In the photos below, I searched for "451 E Altamonte Dr". Once I clicked on the correct suggestion, it took me to 859 Wymore and the suggestion changed to it as well.

2) In an address locator set up as US Address - Single House (no subaddress because of the issues stated above), when I search for the same address, it suggests a bunch of addresses that don't exist (outlined in red), and the correct address (green arrow) is the second suggestion.

Not sure of solution and have contacted tech support. I will follow up with results.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:46:43 GMT

sbritt-esristaff‌,

It seems that suggestions that have not been validated as legitimate addresses should not be suggested. Maybe the development team should consider this from a user perspective. Clicking on suggestions that go nowhere is a waste of time.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 20:56:16 GMT

This has been brought up with support many times. Repeatedly told it will not be addressed, it is behaving as expected, and is a feature, not a bug. I argued you should never return an invalid address. They disagreed.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

Anonymous User — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 02:53:18 GMT

Thanks for the info Jeff. I agree with you it's a bug, an important one.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 14:53:16 GMT

I agree. Support/Development things this is a feature, and the user community clearly this presenting invalid addresses as suggestions is a bug. Every ticket that is related to this is closed because nothing is broken. How do we change that?

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:10:24 GMT

dlaw-esristaff‌ khutchins-esristaff‌ can either of you point us in the right direction? This is a major issue for alot of us and support/development has deemed "feature not bug"

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

ShanaBritt — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 01:50:16 GMT

Phil:

Development is aware of the limitation in the current technology regarding suggestions for geoocde services and have plans to address the behavior in a future release. Currently, the suggestion index is only built for street name and no suggestion index is built for house number or subaddress unit. Because of this, there is no correlation between the street name and house number or subaddress unit.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffPace — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 01:57:29 GMT

Shana,

Thank you for the reply. This may be a difference in terminology, but this is not a "limitation". Returning invalid suggestions that link to no result found is a massive bug from alot of our standpoints. In fact, it makes the the locator unusable as is. Instead of "a future release" I would hope it would be addressed as soon as possible.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 15:45:38 GMT

Thanks for your reply. I hope the team is successful!

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

DerekLaw — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 17:45:17 GMT

Hi Jeff,

Just posting to indicate that Shana Britt replied to your (and Phil's) comments, earlier in this thread (dated Aug 30). This note is for others who may review this thread later.

Thanks,

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

JeffRogers — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 20:33:10 GMT

The ArcGIS Geocoding team is aware of this issue, it was a limitation of the original implementation of the suggestions capability. We have already implemented a new suggestions strategy (which is available to test in the current release of the World Geocoding service). The new strategy verifies the house number as you type and only shows address suggestions for addresses with a verified house number. If the house number cannot be verified it shows a suggestion for a street name. We are working to support this new suggestions strategy for locators that organizations build with ArcGIS.

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

ShanaBritt — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 23:35:10 GMT

Here is some additional information related to this thread.

This limitation is mentioned in the documentation here towards the bottom:

Creating a composite address locator—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

Here is the Note:

The suggest index does not store the house number for performance reasons, and so the best practice is to create a composite locator with at least a Street Address or Point Address locator and a Street Name locator. The reason for this is that if the house number doesn't exist in the Street Address or Point Address locator, you will still get a match to Street Name. You do not need different data to create the Street Name locator. A Street Name locator can be created from Street Address data because the Street Name style only uses a subset of the fields required by Point Address or Street Address.

We have also made fixes to our online service for this and plan on rolling these out to users when creating locators on their own data later in 2018.

Shana

Re: Composite Locator Not Properly Locating Address Points

Anonymous User — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 17:02:40 GMT

Jeff Rogers‌ perfect. That would avoid what we call "ghost addresses" that come up in suggest but are out of range and don't exist. So you click it and nothing comes up. Is that implemented in Server 10.6 or 10.6.1? We have 10.5.1 and this issue perplexes users. We are debating just turning Suggest off temporarily.

Background...It worked perfectly in 10.2. Now, it has this issue as above. The old Autocomplete that Server used up to 10.3 and how it was in Web App Builder 1.x and JS API 3.x back in that timeframe was perfect. Now we get results in the Suggest list that simply don't exist. Also, not sure if this a widget or geocoder thing but if it comes up with 150 Smith St Savannah you click it, in WAB 2.8 and makes it all caps. But if you delete zip code and municipality at the end, like SAVANNAH GA 31405 and is just 150 SMITH ST it won't find it. Type that exact thing in, it finds it. You have to re-type it. Trust me it's confusing especially to casual users.