What is "geocoding"

vb. (present participle of geocode English)

Geocoding is the computational process of transforming a description of a location (textual information on addresses or places) to a location on the Earth's surface (spatial representation in numerical coordinates). Reverse geocoding, on the other hand, converts the inputted geographic coordinates to a description of a location, usually the name of a place or a postal address.

Geocoding (verb): The act of transforming spatial, locationally-descriptive text into a valid spatial representation.

Geocoder (noun): A piece of software or a (web) service that implements a geocoding process i.e. a set of interrelated components in the form of operations, algorithms, and data sources that work together to produce a spatial representation for descriptive locational references.

Geocode (noun): A spatial representation of a descriptive locational reference.

The geographic coordinates representing locations often vary greatly in positional accuracy. Examples include building centroids, land parcels, street addresses, postal code centroids (e.g. ZIP codes, CEDEX), and Administrative Boundary Centroids.