How to check if an address is a business or residential address
I have a dataset that contains many addresses (60,000-ish entries). I want to classify these addresses into either residential or business addresses.
Does anyone know a good API/Service to get started doing this?
I don't think the google maps geocoder can do this at this time.
Fedex and UPS both seem to have API's but they are only released to companies that are shipping products (sort of a need to know basis only)
USPS API: https://www.usps.com/nationalpremieraccounts/rdi.htm
Fedex API:http://www.fedex.com/us/developer/web-services/index.html
This is a hobby project, so free or cheap are better! But paid solutions are not out of the question.
Answer
As mentioned previously, RDI is the way to go. RDI stands for "residential delivery indicator" and it tells you whether an address is residential or commercial. The only issue with that is you have to be a developer to use it and you have to have standardized and certified addresses, not to mention the annual licensing fee from the USPS for hundreds of dollars. Once you've got it and programmed a solution, you can just give it an address with any old ZIP and expect it to work. The address must have the full 12-digit delivery point barcode.
Or you could use a service provider to do the same thing and pay about $50-100 for a list your size.
Full disclosure: I'm the founder of SmartyStreets. We have RDI included into our offering at no extra charge. This means it's as simple as dragging your list to our website and having it processed and back in seconds. We also offer an address verification web service API which will returns the residential/business indicator to let you know the kind of address you're working with.