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What Address Verify Does

Address Verify processes and validates addresses against reference datasets to ensure accuracy and completeness. The service provides:
  • Address verification and cleansing: Matches input addresses against verified reference data to correct errors, standardize formatting, and complete missing components
  • Certified and enhanced datasets: Provides access to postal authority datasets and proprietary enhanced data covering countries worldwide
  • Geocoding and reverse geocoding: Converts addresses to coordinates or coordinates to addresses with latitude/longitude precision
  • Transliteration for international addresses: Transforms addresses between character sets (e.g., Cyrillic to Latin) while preserving address accuracy
  • Address quality scoring: Returns detailed verification codes (AVC) indicating match level, parsing quality, and data confidence
  • Batch and real-time processing: Supports individual address validation via API or bulk dataset processing through batch operations

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Documentation

Follow the links below to all of the Address Verify documentation:

Verify API quickstart

Make your first Address Verify API request.

Address Verify API docs

Check out the API docs for cloud Verify.

Additional docs

Click here for additional Address Verify documentation, including for on-premise installations.

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Understanding Address Quality

Every time Address Verify returns a valid result, it produces an AVC - an Address Verification Code. This code provides various pieces of information, including (but not limited to):
  • To what level of granularity the address could be verified (i.e. broadly to Administrative Area or Locality, or more closely to Thoroughfare, Premise or Delivery Point)
  • How well the input data has been able to be parsed (i.e. whether it was possible to split the provided address into its component parts)
  • How accurately the postal code was able to be verified
  • A ‘Matchscore’, which indicates how much the provided address has changed during the verification process
NOTE: More information about the AVC is available in the Address Verification Code documentation. It’s also worth noting that data for different countries can be verified to varying levels of granularity (i.e. some countries can be validated all the way down to Delivery Point, while others might only be validated to a broad Administrative Area level). More details are available on the Country Data Coverage page. The information provided by the AVC helps in understanding the quality of an address and informs decision making when considering how to use that address.

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Using Address Verify with Address Capture

The Address Capture and Address Verify services offer different routes to the same end result - a fully verified address - but they can also be used in tandem. A great example of this is in the use case of an online customer journey, such as in the ecommerce or gaming industries, where implementing both Capture and Verify ensures all addresses are valid whether they’re searched for or manually input. In this example, here’s how the two services would interact on a delivery address form:
  • If a customer chooses their address from the type-ahead selection in the address field, the address will be valid as it was selected from a list of verified addresses provided by Capture
  • If a customer edits an address provided by Capture, or manually enters an address, Verify then processes that address and matches it against reference data to provide a cleaned-up record
    • Using the AVC provided in the Verify response (see above), decisions can be made about what to do next, i.e. accept the verified address, or revert to the manually inputted address
If you’re currently using only Capture or Verify but interested in understanding more about these services, please get in touch with your account manager or the Loqate support team.

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Address Verify Cloud vs On-Premise Deployments

There are two main ways in which Address Verify can be used:
  • As an on-premise installation
  • Hosted in the public cloud
Which option to choose depends on specific needs. Here’s an overview of each option:

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On-Premise

Verify is available as an on-premise install for Windows, UNIX, and Linux, running on a modern Kubernetes deployment. This option allows full hosting of the Verify API and data within your environment, with no part of the address verification process requiring the internet. If there is a business need to keep your and your customers’ data within your own environment, then an on-premise installation may be the right option. This is a popular option with fintech and Big Data businesses, government agencies, and industries where the highest level of data privacy is required.

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Public Cloud

Hosted and maintained by Loqate, and accessed via a REST API, the public cloud version of Verify is always updated with the latest data, giving the most up to date results. Accessing Verify this way allows focus on address verification results, taking the stress out of updating, hosting, optimizing, and maintaining the infrastructure needed to handle a Verify deployment. Monthly updates are provided for data and API, giving the ability to cleanse address data, worldwide, using one simple endpoint. If an on-premise installation is not required, a public cloud installation is likely to be the most suitable option. NOTE: For customers with very specific, specialized requirements, a private cloud option is also offered where Loqate hosts a dedicated instance of the Verify API and data. Your account manager can provide details on this option if required.

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Which Fields Should Be Used to Ensure the Best Match Rate?

Address Verify can accept address details entered in a variety of different ways, while still being able to return accurate results. The best fields to use in the input will largely depend on the address information available, but address data is most often seen formatted in two ways:
  • The complete address in a single field: in this case, the whole address can be passed in the Address1 field
  • Address data divided into multiple fields: in this instance there may be some specific data (such as city and postal code) which can be passed in specific fields, and some that contains mixed information (house/building number plus street, etc.) which can be passed together to be parsed, matched, corrected, standardized and formatted
Either method will return good results, and testing different methods with your own data will help to optimize results. However, the second method is recommended as the best option. Example calls can be found in the Verify API documentation, which demonstrate how data can be structured for input.

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Should the AVC or AQI Be Used?

Alongside the Address Verification Code, or AVC (see Understanding Address Quality above), Address Verify also returns a code called the Address Quality Index (AQI), and at face value it can look as though both of these codes provide the same information. There are, however, notable differences between the AVC and the AQI, and the information they provide. Here are some quick descriptions of the two codes and what they’re intended to be used for:
  • AVC: a proprietary response code which includes information associated with the parsing and matching of the address record. This can be used to identify the level to which an address has been verified.
  • AQI: a pre-defined, simplified code which provides a high-level view of the quality of an address. This is intended to offer a view of overall address quality, but not to be used as a metric for deciding whether to accept an address which has been processed via Verify. The AVC should be used to verify addresses.
View the complete AVC and AQI specifications for detailed descriptions of both codes. When deciding what action to take after receiving a response from Verify, the best approach is usually to understand the following points in combination:
  • The level to which an address has been validated
  • How much the inputted address had to be manipulated in order to convert it into the outputted address
It’s recommended to use the AVC as this gives all of the required information.