“This seems to be a valid address. I queried it in Google Maps, but Trestle says it is an invalid address. Why is that?”
We get this question often for our Reverse Address API and Address Validation API, and it can happen for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, Google does not provide the validity of the address. If you enter an address, it is worth checking if you see a building or a house, or just a ghost building image or a street image like shown below. That might be an indicator that the address is not valid.
You can also check if the pin is on a building, house, or in the middle of the street. If the pin is in the middle of the street, that is another indicator of the address not existing in the real world.
That happens because Google Maps’ main goal and mission is to find directions to a particular location. They try to do the closest match to an address and are not looking to validate an address or confirm if mail delivers to that address.
In fact, USPS (United States Postal Service) provides a service to check if the address is deliverable. If it’s not deliverable, Trestle will mark those addresses as invalid.
There are scenarios, though, where the address might be valid and exist in the real world. However, USPS might not be delivering mail there. Today, Trestle returns them as invalid addresses. Moving forward, we are looking to distinguish between actual invalid addresses and these undeliverable addresses by USPS. Hopefully more information will be available soon.
If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out via support@trestleiq.com.