Ever wish you could just type someone’s street and ZIP Code information and get a full address nicely populated (not to mention CASS-certified)? Now you can, with help from SmartyStreets. SmartyStreets “makes address verification easy” and best of all, it has an excellent API which means your web-site developer can integrate address verification into your website and office procedures. You can clean up 250 addresses per month at no cost.

What does SmartyStreets do?

SmartyStreets provides address verification, or address validation, which is used to determine the deliver-ability of a specific address. During the address verification process, addresses are cleaned and standardized according to USPS guidelines. Spelling mistakes are corrected, and the standard 5-digit ZIP Code is expanded to the more precise ZIP+4 Code. This process can be used to qualify for discounts on bulk mailings.

SmartyStreets’ address verification services will let you know if a specific address is real and deliverable, but it doesn’t confirm who is living at the address. According to SmartyStreets, verifying occupants is quite difficult to do with a high degree of accuracy, and it is not a part of the service. However, the US Postal Service maintains a list of people who have submitted a change of address form, called the National Change Of Address (NCOA) registry. There are several services who will perform NCOA services, SmartyStreets’ blog SmartStreets’ Blog provides more details.

I misspelled Katy’s address, Smartystreets cleaned the address and provided other information such as congressional district, postal carrier route etc: 390 S Woods Mil Rd, Chesterfield MO

As a data geek, I was especially interested in the results codes. For example if I enter Katy’s address without a suite number, I learn it’s a valid, but inactive address. That is good information to have it impacts mail deliver-ability and web search results. Remember: The devil is in the details, Here is what SmartyStreets said about Katy:
“input_id”: “0”,
“input_index”: 0,
“candidate_index”: 0,
“delivery_line_1”: “390 S Woods Mill Rd Ste B1”,
“last_line”: “Chesterfield MO 63017-3489”,
“delivery_point_barcode”: “630173489216”,
“components”: {
“primary_number”: “390”,
“street_predirection”: “S”,
“street_name”: “Woods Mill”,
“street_suffix”: “Rd”,
“secondary_number”: “B1”,
“secondary_designator”: “Ste”,
“city_name”: “Chesterfield”,
“state_abbreviation”: “MO”,
“zipcode”: “63017”,
“plus4_code”: “3489”,
“delivery_point”: “21”,
“delivery_point_check_digit”: “6”

“record_type”: “H”,
“zip_type”: “Standard”,
“county_fips”: “29189”,
“county_name”: “Saint Louis”,
“carrier_route”: “C036”,
“congressional_district”: “02”,
“rdi”: “Commercial”,
“elot_sequence”: “0003”,
“elot_sort”: “D”,
“latitude”: 38.64986,
“longitude”: -90.50979,
“precision”: “Zip9”,
“time_zone”: “Central”,
“utc_offset”: -6,
“dst”: true

“dpv_match_code”: “Y”,
“dpv_footnotes”: “AABB”,
“dpv_cmra”: “N”,
“dpv_vacant”: “N”,
“active”: “Y”,
“footnotes”: “M#”

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