Geocoding Has Changed.

A few meters can make the difference between an accurate risk score and a costly miss, a successful delivery and a failed one, or the right tax jurisdiction and an expensive error.

Geocoding has advanced dramatically. What used to be “good enough” (ZIP™ centroids or street-centerline estimates) is no longer sufficient for many insurance, logistics, government and analytics use cases.

Yet accuracy claims vary, and not every provider offers the same transparency or complementary context. Real-world databases also contain non-USPS® addresses — new construction, private roads, rural locations and other non-traditional records that pure postal files often miss.

How Geocoding Improved

Early methods relied on postal centroids and street-range interpolation. Today’s stronger solutions deliver true rooftop or sub-building placement, clear accuracy codes, better matching on incomplete addresses, support for non-USPS addresses, persistent identifiers, and the ability to enrich coordinates with property and risk data.

• Rooftop - Pin on or next to the primary building
• Parcel centroid - Center of the legal property boundary
• Interpolated - Estimated along a street segment
• ZIP+4 / ZIP centroid - Broader postal-area average

Transparency matters. Leading providers return explicit accuracy levels instead of vague “rooftop” labels.

The Competitive Landscape

Providers often publish different types of statistics, so it’s important to understand what the numbers actually mean:

• Melissa provides rooftop-level geocodes for 96.9% of U.S. physical addresses and in 40+ additional countries (including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and others). Broader geocoding is available across 250+ countries. Melissa’s multi-sourced approach also supports geocoding of non-USPS addresses. Complementary enrichments include property attributes, hazard risk layers, demographics and the Melissa Address Key (MAK).
• Smarty cites 97% rooftop/parcel accuracy. This is a claim about positional correctness — when they return a high-precision geocode, they state it lands on the actual rooftop or parcel 97% of the time.
• Precisely emphasizes global coverage and deep attribute enrichment.
• Major mapping platforms (Google, HERE, Mapbox) offer strong visualization but often more restrictive storage terms.

Key distinction: Smarty’s 97% is primarily an accuracy claim. Melissa’s 96.9% (U.S.) and 40+ countries figure is primarily a coverage claim – the percentage of addresses that receive a rooftop-level result. Non-USPS support further expands practical coverage.

In independent testing, the City of Burbank achieved a 99.9% GIS location accuracy match rate after moving to Melissa rooftop placement.

Real-World Proof Points

• City of Burbank - 99.9% match rate with rooftop geocodes.
• Symmetry Software - Selected Melissa for precise tax-jurisdiction determination.
• Paradigm - Improved targeting for pipeline safety outreach using Melissa address + parcel data.

A Practical Way to Compare Vendors

Score providers on:

• Clear rooftop/parcel accuracy codes and published high-precision rates
• Coverage of addresses that receive the highest precision level (U.S. and key international markets)
• Performance on non-USPS, new-construction, and multi-unit addresses
• Available property, hazard or demographic enrichments
• Persistent unique identifier
• Long-term storage rights and support quality

The strongest approach is still testing providers on your own address sample—especially rural, new-construction, multi-unit, non-USPS and international records.

Bottom Line

Geocoding is no longer a commodity coordinate lookup. When comparing claims, distinguish between coverage (including non-USPS) and accuracy. Melissa’s published figures focus on coverage — 96.9% of U.S. physical addresses plus rooftop-level results in 40+ other countries, with multi-sourced support for non-USPS addresses — while Smarty’s 97% focuses on accuracy. Both matter.