Publish a geocode service

Geocode services provide geocoding capabilities on the web. By publishing a locator to a stand-alone ArcGIS Server, geocoding capabilities are available to anyone with access to that ArcGIS Server. Geocode services support various operations, such as finding addresses or places, geocoding tables of addresses or places, finding information about a location with reverse geocoding, and providing interactive autocomplete suggestions.

Note:

This workflow is available only when publishing to a stand-alone ArcGIS Server. To share locators to a server federated with ArcGIS Enterprise, see Share a locator.

You can also use ArcPy to publish a geocode service to a stand-alone server. To learn more, see CreateGeocodeSDDraft.

Before publishing your locator, there are a few options you can use to manage locator data in the server. If your locator is, or should be, stored on the server in a specific location, for instance, if your locator is larger than 1GB in size, register the folder location as a data store. Using a data store can minimize service downtime when restarting or overwriting a service. If your locator is stored on a local machine, the publishing process copies the locator to the server. See the following topics to learn more about managing locator data:

• Make your data accessible to ArcGIS Server
• Copy data when publishing to ArcGIS Server
• Register your data with ArcGIS Server using Server Manager or Register your data with ArcGIS Server using ArcGIS Pro.

Note:

If your locator is over 1GB in size, you must publish the locator using a data store, as the locator may fail to publish. Copy the locator to the folder on the server that will be registered as a data store with the stand-alone server.

• Publishing a locator created with the Create Address Locator tool requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.6 or later. However, ArcGIS Server 10.9 will be the last release to support publishing locators created with the tool. Locators created with the Create Address Locator tool should be re-created in ArcGIS Pro 2.3 or later with the Create Locator tool.
• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.6.1 or later.
• Publishing a locator based on the Parcel role created with the Create Locator tool or a locator created with the Create Feature Locator tool requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.8 or later.
• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool with the Precision Type parameter set to Global Extra High or Local Extra High requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.8.1 or later.
• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.7 or later and based on the Street Address role that supports custom offsets and intersection connectors requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.9 to maintain the settings.

• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.8 or later and based on the Point Address role that supports subaddresses requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.9 or later to reverse geocode and return subaddress results.

• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.9 or later and based on the Point Address role that supports subaddresses with Suggestions for partial subaddresses enabled requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.9.1 or later to return valid suggestions for partial subaddress name input.

• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.0 or later and based on the Point Address role with Show suggestions for partial house numbers enabled requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.0 or later to return valid suggestions for partial house number input.
• Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.0 or later and based on the Point Address role that supports subaddresses and that has Show summary of subaddresses with base address suggestion, Suggest as partial unit is typed, or Suggest when base address is typed enabled requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.0 or later to return valid suggestions for subaddresses or subaddress summary.
• Publishing a locator created with the Create Feature Locator tool that includes custom output fields in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 or later requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.2 or later to return the custom output fields in the geocode results.
• Publishing a locator that has polygon output fields appended to it using the Add Polygon Fields To Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 or later requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.2 or later to return the polygon output fields in the geocode results.
• Publishing a locator based on z-aware point data that is created with the Create Feature Locator tool or Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 or later requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.2 or later to return the z-coordinate in the geocode results.
• Publishing a locator based on the POI role that supports categories created with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 11.2 or later to use the return collections parameter.

To publish a geocode service, follow these steps:

1. In the Catalog pane or a catalog view, browse to the collection of servers in your project. Right-click the ArcGIS Server that you'll publish to, click Publish, and click Geocode Service .

   The Publish menu is only available on ArcGIS Server connections to stand-alone servers with privileges to publish services.

2. On the Select Locator dialog box, browse to the locator that you want to publish, select it, and click OK.
3. In the Publish Geocode Service pane, provide a name for the service.

   Note:

   The name of the service cannot be more than 120 characters in length and can contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores.

4. Optionally, complete the Summary and Tags fields.

   You can enter a maximum of 128 tags.

5. In the Folder menu, specify the folder on the server where you want to store the service. Type the name of the folder if the folder does not already exist.

   The service is stored in the root folder if a folder is not specified.

6. On the Configuration tab, set the properties for your geocode service. You can choose what users can do with your service by enabling Capabilities as needed and take fine-grain control of how the server exposes your service.

   For details on setting the service properties, see Configure a geocode service. For information about how to best configure your services for deployment, see Tune and configure services.

7. Optionally, click the Content tab to view the new service structure.
8. Click Analyze to identify potential issues or limitations. The Messages tab displays errors and warnings raised by the analysis. Right-click a message to get more information, access the associated help topic, or access suggested fixes. Errors must be resolved before you can save the service definition. Resolving warnings is recommended but not required.

   For more information about resolving these issues, see Analyze your GIS resource.

   Note:

   Analyzer help topics refer to the locator that corresponds to the service being published. For example, you may see references to composite locators for an analyzer issued for your geocode service.

9. Once you've resolved any errors, and optionally resolved any warnings, click Publish .

   To save a service definition for the geocode service instead, click the Publish drop-down arrow and click Save As SD. To learn more, see Save a service definition for a geocode service.

10. Optionally, click Jobs to monitor the job status.
11. When the service has successfully published, optionally click the Manage the service link to access the service REST endpoint.