[R-sig-Geo] package to query Google for latitude and longitude for a given ZIP code

[Tom Sgouros]

Andrew:

I don't know if it matters to your goal, but there are some zip codes that do not correspond to locations, and some correspond to locations best represented by a line, not an area.  The post office originally set them up to represent delivery routes or groups of routes, and most of them represent a place, but not all do.  I ran across a note about the limitations of zip codes as a representation of areas in the technical docs of some US Census data once.   I know of one zip code near me that contains a couple of buildings that aren't next to each other.  Some geographic information is better than none, but I don't know what you'd do about a situation like that.

 -Tom


On Mar 8, 2011, at 12:16 PM, Dan Putler wrote:

> Andrew,
> 
> What you are proposing (a) violates Google's terms of service and (b) is pretty meaningless since a PO Box zip code will be located at a post office location, not the household's or firm's location, which I'm pretty certain is not the location that will matter conceptually for any model you develop based on this information.
> 
> Dan
> 
> On 03/08/2011 09:03 AM, Andrew Yee wrote:
>> Hi, I was wondering if someone could direct me to a package that would
>> allow you to query Google (or any other resource) for the latitude and
>> longitude of a ZIP code.
>> 
>> While I'm aware of the zipcode package, there are certain ZIP codes
>> that are not in the database (e.g. areas that are serviced by PO
>> boxes, e.g. 03861).
>> 
>> I was thinking that Google could be helpful for retrieving this kind
>> of information and was hoping that there's a package that handles
>> these kinds of queries.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Andrew
>> 
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