

To make your geocode service available to clients, create an address locator in ArcGIS Desktop and publish it as a geocode service to ArcGIS Server. By investing the time to build your own geocode service, you can ensure that your geocoding needs are met. All these situations call for a specialized geocoding solution.

While there are many commercially available geocode services, these may not meet your organization's needs for several reasons: the address information is not up-to-date, your address formatting is different, or you want people to find address locations by the local or common name of a feature (for example, The White House). Sometimes you can see relationships by reviewing the map other times, use spatial analysis tools to reveal information that can't be easily seen. Geocoding allows you to find and display addresses on a map and see how they relate to surrounding features. Geocode services support a wide range of applications, from business and customer management, to shipping and distribution to getting directions to where you need to go.
