Finding an Exact Street Match - MapInfo_Pro - 2023

When MapInfo Pro geocodes, it attempts to find an exact match between source and target street names. That means that the addresses must be the same, character for character. However, matching is not case sensitive; upper and lower case letters are successfully matched with one another. MapInfo Pro does not get an exact match in many cases and uses a file of abbreviation equivalences to improve its "hit rate". Once you understand the various ways in which a match can fail, you are in a better position to understand what you can do to improve things.

The next table illustrates exact matching. The first column contains a street name from a target table and the second column contains the corresponding street name from a source table. The third column says why they do not match. The fourth column indicates whether the particular problem is one which can be corrected through using the abbreviation file. This table assumes that the addresses are the contents of a single column in a table. While the street number would often be in the same column, we do not indicate street numbers here because they are handled differently than street names.

MapInfo Pro's matching process is not case-sensitive; it does not care whether a letter is upper case or lower case. This means that MapInfo Pro treats the following as the same: Main, MAIN, main, maIN.

MapInfo Pro has a file called the Abbreviations File (MAPINFOW.ABB), which you can use to record acceptable alternate spellings for abbreviations. For example Av for Ave. or BL for Blvd. etc. Using this file increases your hit rate because there are more acceptable spellings for the same abbreviations.