same coordinates yield different results in Nominatim and MapQuest

Question

According to Nominatim and MapQuest, the following end-points should provide the same data:

• Nominatim: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse
• MapQuest: http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/reverse

In fact

The Nominatim Search Service is similar to our MapQuest Search Service with its simple interface and powerful capabilities, but instead relies solely on data contributed to OpenStreetMap.

Therefore I would expect the two services to provide the same data, nevertheless the following query for the same coordinates (41.904163, 12.485597) yields different results:

• Nominatim: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?lat=41.904163&lon=12.485597&addressdetails=1&format=xml&zoom=18
• MapQuest: http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/reverse.php?lat=41.904163&lon=12.485597&addressdetails=1&format=xml&zoom=18

Results:

• Nominatim: Via Francesco Crispi
• MapQuest: Via Gregoriana

Why?

NOTE: as of 12.44 PM UTC (July 1st, 2013) OSM is returning the same results as MapQuest. There are a couple of related discussions on GitHub:

• Issue 66
• Issue 67

Answer 1

This is a bug in Nominatim, which is going to be fixed:

Nominatim was no longer searching for objects below street level (house numbers, POIs, etc.) due to this commit. It only concerned the instance on osm.org.

See issue #66 on GitHub: https://github.com/twain47/Nominatim/issues/66