Google has an excellent web service that allows us to make use of their large database of geographic information. We can submit a geographical search string like “Channabasaveshwara institute of technology” to their geocoding API and have Google return its best guess as to where on a map we might find our search string and tell us about the landmarks nearby. The geocoding service is free but rate limited so you cannot make unlimited use of the API in a commercial application. But if you have some survey data where an end user has entered a location in a free-format input box, you can use this API to clean up your data quite nicely. When you are using a free API like Google’s geocoding API, you need to be respectful in your use of these resources. If too many people abuse the service, Google might drop or significantly curtail its free service. You can read the online documentation for this service, but it is quite simple and you can even test it using a browser by typing the following URL into your browser: http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/json?address=Channabasaveshwara+institute+of+technology&key=42 Make sure to unwrap the URL and remove any spaces from the URL before pasting it into your browser. The following is a simple application to prompt the user for a search string, call the Google geocoding API, and extract information from the returned JSON.