Google geocoder doesn't return U.S. county information

Question

I'm geocoding a bunch of U.S. addresses with various levels of completion. In some cases, Google's geocoding API (https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=) doesn't return a county (administrative_area_level_2) although the data appear specific enough to determine a county.

For example, the following sample data (in quotation marks) don't return a county although, to the best of my knowledge, they can be assigned to a single unambiguous county:

1. Street-level resolution data

"Las Vegas Blvd S. 89109 Las Vegas" (Google recognises "South Las Vegas Boulevard")

"155 West Dewey Drive WI 53149 Mukwonago" (Google doesn't recognise "West Dewey Drive")

2. Postal code-level resolution data (Google recognises the postal codes)

"83714 Boise", "11702 Babylon"

Is this a bug? Is there a way to get Google to return a county? Or is there another way to do it? In order to process at least the subset of single-county postal codes, is there a postal code-to-county geocoder out there?

Answer 1

You can probably do this using the Geonames API - for example searching for 83714 gives Garden City, Ada County, Idaho, USA. It won't do street name look up but will certainly give you a way to go from ZipCode or Lat/Lon to county based on your Google result.