Location biasing

Location biasing is when the geographical location of the user entering the address influences the relevance and order of the address results returned. This can be beneficial when your organization expects the address results to be in a specific country or location. The addresses closest in proximity to the user will appear first in the address suggestions list. As addresses local to the user are prioritized, this helps to eliminate confusion in scenarios where the street name is common and may exist in several cities, states or even countries. Reviewing a list of location biased results also reduces the time taken by the user to select the correct address.

The functionality relies upon the user IP or device location, which the user has to provide their permission to be used. Location biased search functionality is available automatically for eligible countries and can be deactivated if not required during API implementation. If no location is given by the user, the results will be alphabetical depending on the country datasets that the organization is licensed for.

Example

Below is an example of the address suggestions with and without location biasing in use. In the example we used the coordinates for Calabash (33.893,-78.568242), a town on the border between North and South Carolina, USA:

Ordinary suggestions list	Location biasing suggestions list