# Address confirmation

The confirmation map says, part by part, which dataset stood behind the postcode, the street, the house number, the town and the region of an address — and which parts nothing could check.

Date: 2026-09-16

The confirmation map is the part of an address answer that says, for each of five parts, which dataset stood behind it: the postcode, the street, the house number, the town and the region each get a source name, `unconfirmed`, or `null`.

## What Spaw answers

`confirmation` is an object with the keys `postal_code`, `street`, `house_number`, `locality` and `administrative_area`. A value names the dataset that confirmed the part: `postcode_directory` (the national postcode directory lists it), `postcode_area` (the town is one the directory lists elsewhere in the postcode's area rather than under the code itself, or, where the postcode's region is a single city such as Mexico City, that region's own name), `register` (a national address register followed the address that far), `range` (the house number sits inside a range the register publishes for the street), `company_register` (an open company register lists companies at exactly that building), `mail_drop_list` (a mailbox operator or a registered agent publishes the address), and `pattern` (the postcode only matched the country's shape). `unconfirmed` means a dataset that could have confirmed the part did not; `null` means nothing could check it at all.

## What it is not

`unconfirmed` is not `wrong`. A partial register that does not carry a street has not said the street is missing, and the map reports exactly that: not confirmed, by a dataset that might have. The verdicts live elsewhere — `exists` for the building, `locality_matches_postcode` and `administrative_area_matches_postcode` for the town and the region — and the map is the evidence beside them.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/address-confirmation