Editor's Note: To learn even more about Address Validation, view our webinar and download the whitepaper.

Addresses are necessary to help find people and places, deliver goods, and in some cases, even to open bank accounts. Addresses with typos or misspellings can be difficult to spot. On the surface, addresses can seem simple and straightforward because we see and use them almost every day. But the reality is, addresses that are not corrected and formatted to local standards can lead to poor user experiences, failed deliveries, and costly extensive customer support.

That’s why we’re announcing the general availability release of Address Validation, a new API that can help improve user experiences by removing friction at account sign-up or checkout, and save time and money for your business by helping reduce the impact of invalid addresses on your operations.

How Address Validation works

Address Validation helps developers detect inaccurate addresses by identifying missing or unconfirmed address components. Using Google Maps Platform’s Places data and knowledge of localized address formats, the API then standardizes the input, providing everything from typo corrections to street name completion to appropriate locality-specific formatting, and more. 

Address Validation also returns valuable metadata about the processed address, such as individual address components with an accuracy confirmation level, as well as Plus Code, geocode, and Place ID for the address. In certain geographies, Address Validation can also differentiate a residential address from a commercial address, which is important when it comes to delivering packages during business hours. Address Validation aggregates data from multiple sources, including postal service data. Address Validation API is CASS CertifiedTM from USPS®, which means developers can match against U.S. Postal Service® data. 

Explore the demo and see how the API responds to common address mistakes.

Benefits of using Address Validation

Address Validation can provide benefits to a number of different use cases across industries. Here are a few examples:

• Retail/e-commerce companies can reduce friction at checkout by offering shoppers an easy way to correct their addresses. Doing so can help reduce failed or mis-deliveries, or other costly complications like canceled orders and chargebacks.

• Transportation & logistics companies can assess address deliverability upon the receipt of an order and help ensure packages reach the right destinations with more precise address components, such as apartment numbers. Drivers can save time and better predict delivery challenges.

• Financial Services companies can use proof of address to help authenticate new account holders. By verifying that a customer’s address exists at account creation, companies can potentially detect fraudulent sign-ups. 

Along with other products like Geocoding and Place Autocomplete, Address Validation makes Google Maps Platform a more comprehensive address and delivery point validation service.

Customers who have already implemented Address Validation have seen positive results. Slerp, an online ordering engine, enables hospitality brands to transact directly with customers from their own websites. Addresses are critical for Slerp’s business because they support a range of order types–click and collect,  on-demand delivery, and nationwide delivery.

Address Validation helps us identify and resolve problematic components of the bad addresses, which in turn improves the efficiency of our Operations team. We have more granular information on the errors. For example, if it was Line 1 and/or Line 2 that is problematic, so that Operations team can rectify it accordingly. Pedro Dias Senior Software Engineer at Slerp

With Address Validation, Google Maps Platform’s knowledge of the real world helps ensure addresses are as accurate as possible, so you can focus on building differentiating experiences and improving operational efficiencies for your apps, services, and business processes. To learn more about Address Validation and to get started, check out our website, demo, and tutorial docs. 

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

1Google Maps Platform is a non-exclusive Licensee of the United States Postal Service®.

2The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service® and used with permission: United States Postal Service®, USPS®, CASS™, CASS Certified™.