Google have just announced a new Geocoding Web Service that implements improvements of version 3 of their Google Maps API. These improvements include a flatter response format that is easier to parse; ability to tag address components; support for full names and abbreviations;ability to differentiate between rooftop and interpolated results; and support for bounding boxes and recommended viewports for each result.

The Geocoding Web Service is also intended to enable pre-caching of results. Ie. you can locally store your geocoded lookups for efficiency. However in the Terms & Conditions, Google restrict this function so that you are only allowed to display cached results (or data derived from them) on a Google Map or Google Earth display.

A Google Maps API key is also no longer required, but requests are limited to 2500 per IP address per day.

Freeing up the conditions regarding data caching is a step in the right direction, but many users will find the limitations of display application and requests per day to be too limiting.