Search Tips

Streetmap Smart Search

Our system takes a guess at what you're searching on- be it a postcode, place, telephone number, grid reference or street. Partial postcode searching is supported on the first part of the post code, eg SW18, but the location you get is a rough calculation. If our system is having difficulties finding what you're looking for then we suggest the following:-

1. Don't try to abbreviate street or road names. ie don't use rd or st in the name. If you're not sure, just use the name without street or road, select "Street" as the search type and select the location you want from the list.

2. "Less is more" - try removing any unnecessary punctuation (commas, full stops etc) as well as house numbers, particularly if the house has a name rather than a number.

3. Try searching with only the first three letters of the place and we'll look for the rest.

Street Search

This search will narrow down the search and look in our database of roads and streets only. This is particularly handy for streets whose names don't contain a word indicating their status (i.e. Denmead or Barnsland).

Place Search

This search will narrow down the search and look in our database of UK Places only. This is handy if you already know the location is a place as it can speed up the search.

Advanced Search Types

If you get a list of ambiguous locations, you will see extra options available. Most of these will be picked up by the Smart Search so you don't really need to use them most of the time. However, these are still accessible if you want to narrow your search further to just London Streets, for example.

London Street

This search will narrow down the search and look in our database of London streets only. This is handy if you already know the street is in London. However, we must advise that the normal street search also includes the London area and is updated more often- so it is generally a better idea just to do a UK street search.

Search by Lat/Long

This will display a map for the Lat/Long coordinates. The format of the coordinates is:

    [d]y.y,[d]x.x or [d]y:yy:yy,[d]x:xx:xx

where [d] id the optional direction N S E or W , y=lat, x=long, -x is west +x is east, eq: 52.038333,-4.578611 or N52.038333,W4.578611 or 52:02:18,-4:34:43 or or N52:02:18,W4:34:43 (note that leading zeroes are required when using the degrees:minutes:seconds notation).

Search by OS Grid

You can display a map for the OS grid reference you supply. The format of the grid reference is nnnnnn,nnnnnn with the x coordinate first and then the y coordinate second.

Search by Landranger Grid

You can display a map for the OS Landranger grid reference you supply. The format of the grid reference is aannnnnn i.e. the sheet code followed by the x sub part and y sub part, eq TQ200700.

Telephone

You can display a map of the approximate location of a telephone code using this option. Please be aware that telephone codes can span a massive area, so this type of search should only be used as an indication of the general area. Please note also that some types of telephone codes are non-geographical (0845, 08000 etc) and might not be in our database at all.