Over at GPSreview, they’ve put TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ maps through quite the head to head match up. 250 business and 250 residential addresses across the U.S. were searched, and the latest versions of each mapping data used.
The result? TeleAtlas came out on top, but barely. They concluded that the difference isn’t significant enough to swing your purchasing decision, and that you should make it on the basis of other factors.
TeleAtlas data has certainly improved since the last time I checked it out and it’s good to see this verified.
About Rich Owings
It’s not exactly what I would call a “smackdown”. In addition to base data quality and currentness, geocoding results can be dependent on a number of things, such as the algorithm being used to position the points relative to street centerlines, how well it handles multiple matching results, how well it handles ambiguous or partial addresses. Another thing to look at is how robust the routing capability is – are such things as u-turn laws, one-way streets, speed limits and other things examined?
As one who has grappled with various parts of all of these at various times, I’d like to see a very comprehensive trade study sometime, pitting not only data providers, but service and application providers against each other, such as ESRI ArcWeb, Oracle Spatial, and others in various combinations.
That’s what I get for trying to craft attention grabbing headlines — getting called on my hyperbole!
I would LOVE to see a study like that. I’m not sure who would fund such a beast though. Any ideas?