Author: lonvia
[Added to the original trac issue at 8.37pm, Thursday, 3rd January 2013]

Single word substrings work fine. Multi-word substrings need to be implemented.

See also #4724.

Author: lonvia
[Added to the original trac issue at 9.41am, Thursday, 24th January 2013]

see also #4676

Author: il cartolaio
[Added to the original trac issue at 2.20pm, Monday, 18th February 2013]

Other examples of commonly used queries in Italy:

[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Via+Colombo%2C+Roma Via Colombo, Roma] should match [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Via+Cristoforo+Colombo%2C+Roma Via Cristoforo Colombo, Roma]

[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Viale+Porta+Ardeatina%2C+Roma Viale Porta Ardeatina, Roma] should match [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Viale+di+Porta+Ardeatina%2C+Roma Viale di Porta Ardeatina, Roma]

I think this problem should get more relevance since these are extremely common queries at least in Italy.

Author: jgc
[Added to the original trac issue at 1.29pm, Wednesday, 3rd April 2013]

In France also, it is very common to use only the last name when giving street addresses, which makes it difficult to find streets with Nominatim when OSM rightly includes their full name, but the requester doesn't know it. For example :

[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Rue+Gambetta%2C+Toulouse Rue Gambetta, Toulouse] should match [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Rue+Lon+Gambetta%2C+Toulouse Rue Lon Gambetta, Toulouse]

[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Rue+Plissier%2C+Toulouse Rue Plissier, Toulouse] should match
[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Rue+du+Lieutenant-Colonel+Plissier%2C+Toulouse Rue du Lieutenant-Colonel Plissier, Toulouse]

[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=rue+Kennedy%2C+Toulouse rue Kennedy, Toulouse] should match [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Rue+John+Fitzgerald+Kennedy%2C+Toulouse Rue John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Toulouse]

(Now that I have found and read this ticket, I know that searching only for the last name, without "Rue", works, but I guess many users would not know.)

I also think that the priority of this enhancement should be raised, as it is likely to very significantly increase the proportion of successful address queries, and hence the perceived relevance of OSM.

Author: lonvia
[Added to the original trac issue at 4.16pm, Thursday, 1st May 2014]

Commit [changeset:f03903e/nominatim] seems to have improved the situation on partial searches a lot. All the examples given in this ticket are working now. Let me know about examples that are still not working. Also of interest would be searches that give worse results now than before.

Author: saintam1
[Added to the original trac issue at 4.37pm, Saturday, 6th December 2014]

Here's an example that seems identical in nature to the above French examples by jgc, but does not work:

There's [http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/260618020 a street in Sofia named after Georgi Sava Rakovski]. If you search for it using its full name ([http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=.+++%2C+%2C+ . , , ]) it works fine, but if you use his last name only ([http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=.+%2C+%2C+ . , , ]), it doesn't (right now it finds some street in another city, as well as a post office, but not the street we want).

This seems very similar to me to the above example with "rue Kennedy" / "rue John Fitzgerald Kennedy" (which works now).

FWIW abbreviation does work with other nearby streets: you can find [http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/247583608 . ("Petar Parchevich Street")] by searching for [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=.+%2C+%2C+ . , , ("Parchevich Street")] and you can find [http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/230377105 . ("William Gladstone Street")] by searching for [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=.+%2C+ . , ("Gladstone Street")]. So it's not like all Cyrillic names are broken.

Author: lonvia
[Added to the original trac issue at 8.18pm, Thursday, 26th February 2015]

See also #5285

Example: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?format=xml&q=66%2Cavenue+kennedy+%2CMULHOUSE+France

Author: lonvia
[Added to the original trac issue at 12.26pm, Saturday, 30th September 2017]

Closing here. There are tickets with more specific problem definitions around now.