Google Address Validation

 

google address validation

Google’s address validation service aims to reduce mistakes in addresses that customers provide during online signup or checkout. These errors can have major consequences for companies – from poor user experiences and delayed deliveries to costly customer support processes.

Using the Google Maps Platform API suite, Address Validation validates the completeness and accuracy of an address and provides missing data elements as well as metadata. This includes parsing the address into its constituent parts and formatting them appropriately, standardizing and correcting errors in the format, determining if an address is residential or commercial, and geocoding it to identify which country it is located in.

A key feature of Google’s address verification is that it is available as a single API worldwide. This simplifies implementation for companies that work with addresses from different countries. It also includes RDI (Residential Delivery Indicator) for several countries, which helps determine shipping rates differently for residential versus commercial addresses.

However, implementing this solution is not without challenges. The Google Maps Platform Terms of Use only permit the cached data to be kept for a maximum of 30 days, which requires you to repeatedly query it when you want to verify an address again. This can be a significant burden for small eCommerce businesses that process large numbers of addresses per month. In addition, requiring users to enter their address in two steps – through both an address autocomplete widget on the website or mobile app and a separate address validation service – is a cumbersome experience for customers.

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