Geocoding

AI companies search by place — “near this point, within 5 km” — so every record with an address needs a coordinate. You publish the address; MasterDB works out the coordinate and records it beside your record, never inside it.

How it works

• In the portal, an address is confirmed with an address search, which also captures the place’s identifier (place_id).
• At publish, MasterDB geocodes the confirmed address and records the coordinate and where it came from in the record’s sidecar — MasterDB’s own signed statement, stored with your record. Your sealed bytes are never changed: a seal covers exactly what you published.
• Search rows carry the coordinate, so a search with near finds the record; a fetch returns the sidecar, so an AI company can see which coordinate came from where.

The checks

A coordinate that falls outside the record’s country, or more than 500 m from the place’s own point when a place was captured, is not published. The record is held: stored, not served, and opened for review. This is the check that stops a wrong or tampered coordinate reaching AI companies. See Holds.

What to publish

Publish the address as your customers would write it, in the country the record is published for. Do not put coordinates in your record’s text.