What is an Address Profile?

In other countries address cleaning is a simple concept. There is an accepted official version of an address, and the cleaning process is simply to match that address and overwrite the input address with the official address in order to correct any errors in the input.

There is no official address database in Ireland. People living in the same street, townland, or even house may write their address very differently. In the absence of an official address database, everyone is entitled to their own opinion of how to write their address barring obvious errors. Take the example of people who live on the following road in Dublin:

75% of addresses we encounter for Woodlands Road are written as Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, with the remaining 25% covered by the other two cases. The difference in the choice of the description of the address is referred to as a ‘Vanity Address’. The final version of Irish addresses is the An Post version. We have never encountered this version. It is the nearest address format that could be described as “Official” and is the version included in the Eircode Address Database. The address cleaning we apply to the input address attempts to preserve all of the “vanity” aspects of the input address. It also corrects for errors and inserts missing address elements. The example below illustrates this approach:

We corrected the misspelling of Cabinteely and a wrong or missing Dublin Postal District.  However, we do not replace the input address with the most common version of that address, in this case, “Woodlands Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.”

We provide output flags to indicate where the address cleaning has been corrected

• a spelling,

• a format change or

• an altered address

It is important to note the changes that we make to your input data as it may need to be reviewed by you before re-importing to ensure it complies with your internal policies and systems.

Address cleaning is only half the process; the second stage is to reformat the address so that it can be saved to your backend CRM or database. We do this by using an Address Profile that defines the constraints and requirements needed to match your system. An Address Profile has the following definitions: 

• Number of Address Lines

• Field widths (Maximum characters allowed)

• What can go on each line (e.g. House Number)

• Required Fields (e.g. Town or County)

• Capitalise (UPPER, lower or Proper case)

• Substitutions (e.g. Special characters)

The default Address Profile we use has five address lines, with Town and County fields as follows:

Note:
Required fields are filled first, then the rest of the address is filled from top to bottom (Address Line 1 to Address Line 3).
A Business name will appear in Address Line 1 if it is part of the address. This can be moved to a separate Address Line if required. The example below demonstrates how an address is populated using our standard Address Profile.

It is important to note that even if you have a required Town and County field, this does not guarantee that they will always be populated for the following reasons:

It is standard practice when writing an address with a County town that the County field is blank so as not to duplicate the County name (e.g., rather than Carlow, Co. Carlow). In the example below we return Example 1A version of the address rather than Example 1B.

In the standard Address Profile, we put Dublin Postal Districts into the County field.  However, some customers prefer it to be populated in the Town field. In this scenario, the County field will be blank (e.g., rather than Dublin 9, Co. Dublin). In the example below we return Example 2A version of the address rather than Example 2B.

Note: We can populate the County field if required as per Example 2B above.

Not all addresses contain a town, which is a surprise to most people.  If the Dublin Postal District is in the County field, then the Town field will be blank for many addresses. Some addresses simply do not have elements to fill each field, e.g., O’Connell, Dublin 1. Other addresses may have omitted a locality from the address; therefore, we cannot append one, e.g., Woodlands Road, Dublin 18.

There are two standard approaches to dealing with this issue,

• pull in the next available address line or

• duplicate an already existing address element

The examples below illustrate this. They represent how someone would complete an online form when challenged by a required Town field. 

Note: 
We can ensure the Town field is always populated using either of these two approaches if required.

The Address Profile attempts to reformat and fit the entire address into the required number of address lines. If the address does not fit, we will apply abbreviations:

• Street » St

• Apartment » Apt

• Road » Rd

• Industrial Estate » Ind Est

If it still does not fit, we may be forced to drop an element from the address. We analyze the address and remove the most superfluous element of the address, as highlighted in the examples below:

 We return a REFORMAT RESULT field so you can clearly see what we have done to the address, such as truncating an address line or dropping an element of the address in order to fit it into the profile.

Note:  We can craft a specific Address Profile to suit your exact needs.