Direct georeferencing of information is becoming easier to get as GPS receivers go cheaper and wrist-held and the use of portable digital maps diffuse worldwide; in spite of that revolution in location, indirect georeferencing, as is the address, naturally linked with Postal Delivery, is still the only mean to locate information on most commercial, administrative and fiscal registers of individuals, buildings, parcels and business, giving the geographic dimension to important data sets. Important application areas, like emergency dispatch, service delivery, geomarketing and simple social uses like to meet friends, rely naturally on the address as primary localiser. However, the real address, as it appears in letters and business or in administrative files, is far from being structured, standardised and complete, making difficult automatic geocoding by the address; so, the need for a better address persists and many efforts must be made, at various levels and institutions, in order to improve the address quality (AQ) needed for quick and reliable location. After describing the address mess and typifying its main errors, and pitfalls, an assessment of AQ is made, from the generation of the address at local level to a number of final uses, using indicators to evaluate AQ components. The European Geographical Information Infrastructure Initiative, discussed in GI 2000, needs to include basic data sets to allow automatic geocoding of any address in Europe. A set of Address standards and wide implementation of measures for the improvement of AQ are proposed to improve georeferencing quality before the use of direct location is widely spread. Automatic form filling in most administrative acts must be as straightforward as a naturally distributed toponymic database is regularly maintained under central co-ordination and linked with its geometric counterpart, segment based street center lines covering the whole country. That basic component of the GI Infrastructure allows for real democratic spatial location ability, travel planning, space knowledge and decision as well as the access to a number of uses and services, namely those provided by mobile phone operators.