I contacted ESRI tech support because I was hesitant to edit the .lot file myself. I needed ESRI to make several customizations to the .lot file to improve geocode success for CT addresses. As part of it, ESRI adjusted the score weights for some of the address elements. In looking at their changes, it appears that they doubled the score weights for the prefix, suftype, and suffix. This seems to have increased the penalty when these fields do not match.
Since these edits were made in addition to some others, I can't say what their individual impact was. But upon review of the match scores, I was able to determine that a 90% match score gives me the match quality that I was looking for, where previously it was closer to 95%. With the greater weights for the elements, a 90% works better for me because it allows for penalties due to spelling sensitivity that were lost with a 95% criteria.
From the customized ESRI file:
<!--Street name elements and their assigned weights-->
<def name="FullStreetName">
<alt>
<elt ref="prefix" weight="10" stan_weight="11" pre_separator="required" post_separator="required"/>
<elt ref="pre_type_no_sthwy" match_as="pretype" weight="6" stan_weight="1000" />
<elt ref="StName" weight="70" stan_weight="10" pre_separator="required" post_separator="required"/>
<elt ref="suftype" weight="14" stan_weight="1000"/>
<elt ref="suffix" weight="10" stan_weight="15" pre_separator="required"/>
</alt>
<alt fallback="true">
<elt ref="prefix" weight="10" stan_weight="11" pre_separator="required" post_separator="required"/>
<elt ref="pre_type_sthwy" match_as="pretype" weight="6" stan_weight="2000" />
<elt ref="OptHyphen" weight="0"/>
<elt ref="StName" weight="70" stan_weight="10" pre_separator="optional" post_separator="required"/>
<elt ref="suftype" weight="14" stan_weight="1000"/>
<elt ref="suffix" weight="10" stan_weight="15" pre_separator="required"/>
</alt>
</def>
Hope this helps. -Karyn
