About

April 23, 2006

Blog about the GeoNames project.

GeoNames.org is compiling a worldwide database of public domain geographical data from various sources. The GeoNames database is not only searchable and downloadable, but also directly accesible via numerous webservices free of charge. The database contains more than 6 Million toponyms in several layers, whereof ca 2.2 Mio populated places. For numerous countries postal code information is available and may be used for address geocoding.

The rss feed for the blog is here :

http://geonames.wordpress.com/feed/

Posted by marc Filed in Uncategorized

7 Responses to “About”

  1. Robert Says:
    January 24, 2007 at 10:14 am

    Hi there,

    I have a question: could it be, that the database you’re using for the georss-service is a different one then the one you are offering on http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/ ? Because there are several cities I can get by using the rss-service, but not when I download the database.
    And second, out of curiousity, your service is quite fast, but you must be searching through a database of millions and millions of records. How do you do that, in terms of performance?
    thanx, Robert

  2. marc Says:
    January 26, 2007 at 3:01 pm

    Hi Robert

    The database is exactly the same. Do you have an example for a city you are missing in the dump?

    The search engine is using an inverted index. It is the same technique google and other search engines are using.

    Cheers

    Marc

  3. Lutz Says:
    February 23, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    I’m searching for a webservice which allows one to find a city via latitude and longitude.

    Since you have all the information which is nessasary to implement such kind of service I would like to ask you to expand your http://ws.geonames.org/search interface with the parameters latitude and longitude.

    Kind regards
    Lutz

  4. marc Says:
    February 23, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Hi Lutz

    What you are looking for is called ‘reverse geocoding’. Geonames has a couple of reverse geocoding web services :

    http://www.geonames.org/export/reverse-geocoding.html

    Kind regards,

    Marc

  5. Lutz Says:
    February 27, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    Hi Marc,

    thank you - that is exactly what I was looking for.

    Thankx

  6. Stephanie Says:
    August 1, 2007 at 7:13 pm

    How should we show attribution on our site if we use the GeoNames database?

    thanks,

    Stephanie

  7. marc Says:
    August 1, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    Hi Stephanie

    A link on your site would be nice. You can put it where and how you see fit.

    Kind regards

    Marc

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