• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – North America ™
• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – Europe ™
• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – Rest of World ™
• Maponics School Boundaries ™
• Maponics ZIP Code Boundaries ™

In local, most companies are still playing with cities and states as the base of their main keywords.  For example, every yellow pages site out there has a URL called “New York City Restaurants” but not nearly as many are targeting neighborhood-specific queries.  If you search Google right now, you’ll see about 1.2MM URLs in its index that target “New York City Restaurants”, but only about 4,000 that target “Tribeca Restaurants”.  And if you looked for URLs that targeted similar queries for zip codes or nearby landmarks, you would see similar small numbers.

So what does this mean to you?  One of the keys to playing the long-tail local SEO game is to expand your “keyword footprint” by providing URLs on your site that target niche queries such as neighborhood and zip code searches.  And the fewer sites that target these queries, the easier it is to rank well for them.  Now it can be tricky to add that much content to your site and get it indexed and ranked properly, but if you do not have the content, you have no chance of ranking.

In mobile, we are seeing Google in particular showing results in tighter and tighter clusters around the location of the mobile browser.  This means that to rank well for mobile queries your website/URL needs to be showing signals to Google that it is in fact close to the location of the person with the phone.  One way to do this is to use highly specific keywords that reference the desired location such as a neighborhood.

While SEO is an ever-evolving game, if you don’t have the data, you’re not even in the ballpark.

LocalSEOGuide is Andrew Shotland’s blog about local search engine optimization and local marketing trends.  Andrew provides “national” and local seo services to enterprise-level sites, startups and small businesses around the world.

We all know that the number of online and mobile resources for real estate search have proliferated in recent years but it takes consumers time to change their habits and adopt new technology.  It appears that Web resources are now firmly embedded as the primary way for people to search for residential real estate—in fact more than 80% of respondents reported using online tools.

In a story written by the Philadelphia Inquirer about the survey, they point out that the number one online resource for real estate search were property portals and noted that “The big three among these sites were Realtor.com (64 percent), Zillow (61 percent), and Trulia (51 percent).”

We are of course pleased that the top sites all leverage Maponics location datasets to enhance search capability and provide local geographic context for areas such as neighborhood, school and ZIP Code Boundaries.  Visit our customer use case pages to read about how one of these companies uses our data.

And this summer, we will begin offering a first-of-its kind dataset containing subdivision boundaries across major metro areas.  Read more about Subdivision Boundaries.

From our Subdivision Boundaries announcement:

In suburban settings, the smallest defined area around properties is typically the subdivision—which can include everything from a few homes within a gated community to a development with hundreds of properties.  The real estate industry has long recognized that the immediate area surrounding properties significantly impacts quality of life and home values.

In the Inquirer article, they also note that driving through neighborhoods is still a common house hunting practice, although people now use online resources to winnow the list of properties they visit—saving money and precious time.  The good news here is that in addition to using our data to enhance their web sites, many of our customers also embed our data in their mobile apps to provide enhanced location context for home buyers on the go.

For more ideas about how mobile real estate apps could add cool new features based on Maponics geofences, check out this article on Directions Magazine.

So, what is the easiest way to enable search and filtering by ZIP Code on your web site?
The Maponics API.

Once registered, you’ll be issued a key that you pass along with data requests from your site to our API server. You can pass one or more parameters to the API server and use a variety of public methods depending on the use case. Here are a few common methods:

Using the methods above, developers can return 5 digit ZIP Codes, 3 digit ZIP Codes, ZIP Code centroids, postal town name and more.

Contact us to sign up for a free API trial.

Other posts in this series:

Maponics Spatial API
API: Global Neighborhood Boundaries
API: School Attendance Zones

The Maponics Spatial API reduces both time-to-market and implementation costs and makes it easy for organizations to add and improve geographic context.  With just a few lines of code, developers can leverage unique and meaningful map layers for reference, filtering and display.

Current and relevant data is central to many web and mobile services but managing the data on the back-end presents serious challenges.  Most companies don’t work with geographic data on a regular basis and therefore don’t have the skills or tools to do so effectively.  Further, obtaining, normalizing and integrating data from various sources is labor and time-intensive and must be repeated each time the data is updated.  Alternatively, requesting only the data needed by visitors/users—when they need it—(via an API) offers huge advantages.

The Maponics API is a RESTful web service that accepts simple requests in the form of plain text XML.  It supports a host of methods that include everything from a simple query containing a single lat/lon to large batches requests.  It can also return everything from simple attribute data to full sets of coordinate pairs (polygons) that represent things like Neighborhood Boundaries.

In coming weeks, we’ll add posts to this series that feature each of the datasets available through our API and get down to the nitty-gritty details about fields, use cases and methods.

But, if you can’t wait that long, check out the API datasets page for a complete list of the datasets available.  On this page, you’ll find details about which fields are available for each dataset and the methods that can be used to access them.

“Choosing the best local map data provider was important to us, because real estate professionals know their neighborhoods like the back of their hand,” said John Hensley, Chief Product and Technology Officer for LPS Real Estate Group.

To find out more about this new partnership read the full press release by following the link below.

LPS Real Estate Group Licenses Maponics Neighborhood and ZIP Code Boundary Data for its Platforms

• consolidating facilities (post offices, sorting centers, etc.)
• reducing staff (mostly by not filling open positions)
• reorganizing the areas covered by postal carrier routes* and ZIP Codes (to increase efficiency, and address facility closings and staffing reductions)
• changing mail delivery schedules and post office retail hours

The result of this postal reorganization has been higher quarterly ZIP Code and carrier route change rates, especially in the second half of 2009.  As an example, in the three month period between this Maponics ZIP Code data release and the last one in August, 12% of all Cook County, IL ZIP Codes have been changed**.  And since the February Maponics data release, 22% of these ZIP Codes have been changed.

The table below shows the % of ZIP Codes that have been changed since Maponics’ February ZIP Code data release for the five Cook County postal towns*** with the most ZIP codes.

What type of on-the-ground alterations cause ZIP Code data changes? Here are some announcements issued by the USPS that pertain specifically to Cook County postal reorganization:

• One major Chicago-area delivery infrastructure change still on the table is a consolidation of outgoing mail operations between the Palatine Processing and Distribution Center (in Cook County) and the Carol Stream Processing and Distribution Center (in Dupage County). This could affect as many as 600 ZIP Codes and 1-200 postal worker positions:
  http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/il/2009/il_2009_0908.htm
  http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/il/2009/il_2009_0610.htm

• The USPS has even been selling Chicago-based assets, in order to reduce recurring costs:
  http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/il/2009/il_2009_0827.htm

Most of the Chicago area ZIP Code data changes seen in the last quarter were the result of ZIP Code and carrier route delivery area reconfigurations. But the image above shows an example of ZIP coverage area change in Henry County, IL that is the result of a postal branch closure. In this case, the Ophiem, IL post office was closed, and the surrounding ZIP Codes (including 61413, pictured) were expanded to pick up the delivery area no longer served by the Ophiem post office.

It is expected that the U.S. Postal Service reorganization will continue well into 2010. In fact, there are currently 437 post offices still under evaluation for closure. This week, Maponics issued a press release discussing the record number of changes we’re seeing in our postal data.  You can read that announcement here, or learn more about our ZIP code data here.

Some definitions:

*   Carrier Route: the building block of a ZIP Code.  The U.S. Postal Services assigns the same carrier route code to a subgroup of addresses within a ZIP Code to aid in mail sorting and delivery.  Typically, a carrier route represents the geographical area to which an individual mail carrier delivers every day.

**   ZIP Code Change: the addition or deletion of a ZIP Code, or significant change to a ZIP Code’s delivery area (the addition or deletion of one or more carrier routes that make up a ZIP Code).

***   Postal Town Name: the town name the U.S. Postal Service associates with a given ZIP Code.

“We have been amazed at the response to the launch of our expanded ZIP Code data suite earlier this year, and are excited to partner with the new customers we are announcing today,” said Maponics CEO, Darrin Clement.

Since 2003, Maponics has been the only place USPS.com refers businesses to for postal maps, data and information. In addition, we are the sole ZIP Code data provider offering postal boundaries via an API.

Click here to read today’s full press release.

Trusted by the Giants

DHL, UPS, FedEX, the United States Postal Service and other mailing industry businesses have come to depend on us for postal maps, data and information, as have direct marketing giants Pitney Bowes MapInfo and D&B (Dunn and Bradstreet).

In fact, Maponics is the only company the USPS.com refers to for business mapping of ZIP Code data and information.

What’s in the New ZIP Code Data Suite?

This new suite offers excellent options for companies looking for a ZIP Code data provider that they can trust to be in the market for the long term, especially for those concerned with accuracy, price, support and licensing flexibility.

Specific datasets now available include:

• 5-digit ZIP Code boundaries
• ZIP+4 data (9-digit ZIP Code data)
• Postal carrier route boundaries
• ZIP+2 boundaries
• ZIP Code-to-neighborhood correspondence data
• 3-digit ZIP Code data
• Custom postal map data

What Sets Our ZIP Code Data Apart

All Maponics postal data is updated quarterly, based upon monthly data feeds from the United States Postal Service and other sources. Unlike many providers, our postal boundaries follow streets, which allows for more precise decision making when viewing these polygons on a map.

In addition, we do not over-generalize our ZIP Code data the way some suppliers do when they:

• drop ZIP Codes that are hard to map.

• give point ZIP Codes (for example, those assigned to P.O. boxes) non-existent polygonal boundaries, because it is easier than dealing with the reality that the U.S. Postal Service has both point ZIP Codes, and ZIP Codes with delivery areas that can be represented as polygons.

As a result of our rigorous data creation methodology, Maponics ZIP Code data is the most complete and accurate on the market, capturing all U.S. ZIP Codes, not just those that are easy to capture.

Learn More

Maponics ZIP Code datasets can be delivered in one of many file formats, including shapefile, TAB and KML, or on a transactional basis via the Maponics Spatial API.  They are easily integrated into ESRI, Pitney Bowes MapInfo and other GIS systems, as well as into web-based applications.

Interested in finding out more about this new suite of ZIP Code data, or want to receive sample data?  Contact us at 800.762.5158 or email info@maponics.com.

We are excited to announce today that two new companies have been hand selected to join the Maponics Distributor Network™. Each offers a specialized set of turn-key solutions that addresses specific location-based problems.

Infusion Development,  a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, creates interactive store locator maps, resource allocation applications, location analysis, business continuity planning, and other business solutions for big name clients like McDonalds and GAP. As a new Maponics reseller, Infusion’s Location Intelligence Services group will now include our data in many of the applications it delivers.

Via MapMart.com, MapMart customers have access to the leading mapping software (GIS) systems, including those from Pitney Bowes MapInfo and ESRI. Now, MapMart will also offer Maponics postal and neighborhood data for sale online, in formats that can be easily integrated into each of these GIS systems.

Read our full announcement here:

http://www.maponics.com/About_Maponics/MaponicsNews/Maponics_Adds_Resellers/maponics_adds_resellers.html

Companies interested in learning more about the Maponics Distributor Network should contact Mark Friend, VP of Sales and Marketing, at 800.762.5158 or info@maponics.com.