this is an old topic but a bit of update on this, as it gets closer to have postcodes in Ireland.

Apparently they will start sending out the eircode letters to all addresses sometime around late June or July and then it will mean that eircode will be "officially" the active postcode of Ireland.
all of the individual addresses in geodirectory (i guess initially) from anpost is assigned a unique code with some small exceptions like shopping centers etc.
however due to the licensing limitations i dont think we will be able to use the eircodes in waze, unless waze or google get a usage/navigation license from eircode with ECAD database etc, which will contain coordinate information as well as others (highly unlikely but, getting access to the address search web services is another option).
of course editors can also start putting the postcodes manually, but again probably this will cause licensing issue, and will not be permitted
in short that would be great if we could use the postcodes in waze in Ireland, however i dont think we will be able to use them in a short time.

Hopefully they'll be properly geocoded


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As far as I know waze just pulls the postcodes from google, which can lead to some rather strange results. Not sure if they have any intention of integrating them at the moment


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iainhouse wrote:That's correct. There's some sort of process cycle by which the postcode geopoints make it from Royal Mail to Google, over which we have no control. Waze gets the geopoints from Google at time of search.

I'm in 2 minds as to whether it would be good to have postcodes directly in Waze. It would be easier to add new ones and deal with the occasional routing problem caused by a postcode location not matching well with properties in that postcode. On the other hand, there would probably be a rush of individual editors "tweaking" postcode locations to exactly match their home/preferred destination.

I'd guess that google has at one time purchased the PAF database (now managed by OFCOM) and I'm pretty sure it isn't geocoded, so they've probably also purchased the OS cross reference database. Both of these contain a lot of errors, the geocoded reference database pin points (roughly) the averaged centre of the postal address, hence why google gets it so wonderfully wrong at times.

I'd agree with internally adding postcodes, it would be a massive cost and a huge job without any real benefit to users. They only cover around 29 million delivery points and we'd have to add all the building numbers manually anyway. Allowing google search to find the address from the postcode and house number would be much more preferable.

Pip


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davidg666 wrote: So if Google do something similar for Ireland (presumably to make their own maps work properly) when the Eircode locations become available, then Waze should pick them up too, as long as Waze is still using Google for searching.

I'd hope so

davidg666 wrote:It's not clear yet from the Eircode site whether or how they'll be making the coordinates of each of the 2.2 million codes available - and whether they'll be charging for them too. If they were readily available, it'd be nice if Waze could bulk-import them (and keep them up-to-date as new ones are added...). That said, I wonder if Waze (as an organisation) would be bothered with a relatively small country.

Do we know what they do with other locations? I can get it to search for a UK postcode fine (from the app, not Live Map) (I used BT2 8HQ) but not (for example) for an Australian one (I tried "2913, Australia")

We haven't done a whole lot in Ireland with manually entering house numbers (with the exception of a few dedicated individuals), so although it might be handy to allow Eircodes to be added to the editor too (there's one per address, so they're much finer-grained than UK postcodes) just like house numbers, I can't imagine Waze will allow this either - and entering 2.2 million 7-character codes by hand is unlikely to happen.

Having had a look at the various websites about Eircodes, this will be a product and as yet pricing has not yet been made publicly available. It will however be a fully geocoded product, so if google buys it (because I very much doubt Waze will, even though they are owned by google) then address searches will be the most accurate on the planet.

As for other countries, I've no idea if they will even have similar or if waze/google has purchased their databases.

Pip

The majority of countries postcodes seem to cover an area rather than a specific property, this appears to make Eircodes quite unique. I'm fairly sure google will probably get some sort of deal to get the database and incorporate it, they have deep deep pockets for that sort of thing.


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Looks like Eircodes are unique, after a chat and a hunt about the interwebs I can't find another country that targets specific buildings


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