CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#bing-apibing-maps
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson

Reputation: 183

bing maps REST/SOAP geocoding returns poor results

I'm trying to get some results by quering with some Belgrade's street addresses and I usually get 0 results?! I dont have this problem on bing maps web page's serach bar... Also google's geocoding service gives me decent results. I'm already using bing maps map control in my wpf app and I'd rather avoid mixing google and bing services if I dont really need to.

For SOAP I tried using both, query and address while filling town and postal codes. None of it worked. I also tried using REST service with same results.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1076

Answers (1)

rbrundritt
rbrundritt

Reputation: 18052

Just to clarify, when you use bing.com/maps it returns the expected result, but when using API's it isn't. Assuming this is the case the issue is that when using bing.com/maps additional information is being sent with the request which helps it out, like where the map is currently centered over and sometimes your location. This causes the geocoder to look at possible results in your area.

Looking at your example 'bircaninova', this is a pretty limited amount of data and will cause the geocoder to search the whole world looking for a city, neighbourhood, landmark or some other significant location with that name. There just happens to be a neighbourhood in Russia with this name. This is only a partial name of a street, which exists in a lot of cities around the world. You need to provide more context. Adding ', Zrenjanin, Serbia' for instance returns a result which I suspect you were looking for.

Another way to help the geocoder is to provide some information about the user using these settings: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff701704.aspx

I would recommend taking a look at the best practices for Bing Maps here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn894107.aspx

Also note that the SOAP services are old and should be avoided. They are slower, have less features, and generally less accurate.

Upvotes: 1

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