An overview of the Geocoding toolbox

Geocoding is the process of assigning a location, usually in the form of coordinate values, to an address by comparing the descriptive location elements in the address to those present in the reference material. Addresses come in many forms, ranging from the common address format of house number followed by the street name and succeeding information to other location descriptions such as postal zone or census tract. In essence, an address includes any type of information that distinguishes a place.

Many common tasks are related to the geocoding process, such as the creation and maintenance of address locators, geocoding addresses, and getting addresses for point locations. The Geocoding toolbox contains tools to assist in accomplishing these tasks.

Geocoding tools

Tool	Description
Create Address Locator	Creates an address locator. The address locator can be used to find a location of an address, geocode a table of addresses, or get the address of a point location.
Create Composite Address Locator	Creates a composite address locator. A composite address locator consists of two or more individual address locators that allow addresses to be matched against the multiple address locators.
Geocode Addresses	Geocodes a table of addresses. This process requires a table that stores the addresses you want to geocode and an address locator or a composite address locator. This tool matches the addresses against the address locator and saves the result for each input record in a new point feature class. When using the ArcGIS World Geocoding Service, this operation may consume credits.
Rebuild Address Locator	Rebuilds an address locator to update the locator with the current reference data. Since an address locator contains a snapshot of the reference data when it was created, it will not geocode addresses against the updated data when the geometry and attributes of the reference data are changed. To geocode addresses against the current version of the reference data, the address locator must be rebuilt if you want to update the changes in the locator.
Rematch Addresses	Rematches addresses in a geocoded feature class.
Reverse Geocode	Creates addresses from point locations in a feature class. The reverse geocoding process searches for the nearest address or intersection for the point location based on the specified search distance. When using the ArcGIS World Geocoding Service, this operation may consume credits.
Standardize Addresses	Standardizes the address information in a table or feature class.

Two tools for packaging locators are available in the Package toolset of the Data Management toolbox.

Package tools for locators

Tool	Description
Consolidate Locator	Consolidate a locator or composite locator by copying all locators into a single folder.
Package Locator	Package a locator or composite locator to create a single compressed .gcpk file.

Legacy:

The following tools that were available in the Geocoding toolbox prior to version 9.2 have been removed. They are no longer applicable.

Legacy geocoding tools

Tool	Recommendation
Automate Geocoding Indexes	Use the Create Address Locator tool to create a new address locator. No indexes need to be automated.
Deautomate Geocoding Indexes	Use the Create Address Locator tool to create a new address locator. No indexes need to be deautomated.
Delete Address Locator	Use the Delete tool to delete an address locator.
Rebuild Geocoding Indexes	Use the Create Address Locator tool to create a new address locator. No indexes need to be rebuilt. Use the Rebuild Address Locator tool to rebuild an address locator. Address attributes and indexes in the address locator will be refreshed.