Google Geocoding Finally Here!
Well, it works! Finally, geocoding addresses in Ireland is here and it’s Google that’s finally come up trumps. They must have taken my suggestion and purchased the GeoDirectory from An Post. Thank you to Tom from Revolutionaries.ie for the heads up with a comment in this post. Much appreciated Tom. Basically, Google have turned on geocoding for Ireland over the past few weeks as well as for India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. This follows a number of updates by Google to it’s mapping system with a recent map update, which significantly increased the map coverage of Ireland, as well as a satellite update which has provided an increase in the satellite coverage over some areas. So, here it is for you to play with.
I’ve taken the above from the Google Maps API Blog and just customised the javascript to focus on Ireland and not the other countries in the update.
I’ve had a little bit of time to play with this and so far, so good. All seems to be working fine. In general, it works, as long as you spell the road correctly and that road appears on the map as well. If you search for “Flowerhill Navan Meath Ireland”, it doesn’t find it’s match but if you try “Flower Hill Navan Meath Ireland” it does get there. When building applications to work with this, you might need to try combining/splitting words to find a match. I suppose the only way to do a good test is for people to use it. So, maybe you’ll try it out and post up a comment here of your experience? Did it find the addresses you were looking for? Was the street number locator accurate?
In addition, since we now have good maps and good geocoding for Ireland… it suggests we should have a decent route finding system using Google Maps! Well, we do it seems. Check out this link to a route I made on Google Maps from O’Connell Street, Dublin to Flower Hill, Navan.
Well, enjoy geocoding and planning your routes! 
