GeoNames Forum

I'm trying to reverse geocode based on some inputted lat/lng information and customize some content and information returned via XML. My lookup volume will be very low, so implementing my own database doesn't make sense.

The accuracy is not terribly critical, but I am trying to get within certain metropolitan areas, and then specific cities - all within the United States.

After reading the documentation, I can't seem to find any information on which level (or even if) the USA MSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) or the Google DMA (https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/cities-DMAregions) area information is located in? I've tried findNearbyPlaceName, findNearby, and extendedFindNearby with no success. These are usually a 3 digit number starting with 500 through (currently) 881 for the USA.

I obviously can search on postal code for the comparison, but in some MSA's, there can be a large number of postal codes.

Is there something in the documentation that I failed to understand or read?

If not, can I make this a feature request?

there's an unofficial DMA shapefile here: http://geocommons.com/overlays/117147

and it's really really easy to do simple lookups against it using an rtree in python: http://toblerity.org/rtree/tutorial.html (after you get the candidates from the rtree, do an exact containment search on the shape. it's maybe 15 lines of code.