Tutorial – Geocoding

Introduction

Geocoding is the process of converting addresses (like a street address) into geographic coordinates (like latitude and longitude), which you can use to place markers on a map, or position the map. For our final project Geocoding has been a valuable tool because it gives us the geographic coordinates of students cities and towns so that we can properly add them to our data visualization. This is particularly important for Digital Humanities because it helps translate location data into geographic coordinates which lets us easily use Data Visualzation tools like Flourish.

Step 1

1. Go to your Google Sheet with all your location data.
2. Click on Extensions -> Add Ons -> Get Add Ons.
3. Then search up Geocode.
4. Lastly download Geocode by Awesome Table

Step 2

Once downloaded make sure that your location data is in one column and if it is not you will have to consolidate the proper columns into a Full Address column.

Step 3

To create the Full Address column you need to consolidate that columns that contain your location data. The Geocode application will do this for you. To do this go to Extensions -> Geocode by Awesome Table -> Start Geocoding and then a window will show up on your sheet. Then click on Are your addresses in multiple columns? Then another window will show up that will contain all the columns in your current sheet and select the columns that contain the relevant location data. This will then create the new column called Full Address which will contain the full location making it easy to geocode.

Step 4

After your location data is consolidated or if was already properly formatted we can start geocoding. On the dropdown menu named Address column find the column tht corressponds to the address data and then click on the Geocode! button and two new columns will be created named latitude and longitude and then Geocode will start filling in those columns with the addresses respective coordinates.

Step 5

Go over your Latitude and Longitude columns and check for any errors in the columns. If there are any errors in the columns. An error will be indicated by the Latitude and Longitude cells filled in with red. If there is an error you can do a wider search with Geocode or you might have a wrong location and will have to fix it yourself. Once you have all errors fixed you will have all your locations properly geocoded.

Here is a link to the webpage for Geocode by Awesome Table

Here is a link to the documentation for Geocode by Awesome Table