Geo-referencing the location of a place from its name

If you need to geo-reference your data based on the name of a location, there are a handful of useful websites that allow you to search by the name of a location around the world (outside the US) to obtain the latitude and longitude of that location:

GeoNames

• See this post for detail.

National Geospatial-Intelligent Agency (NGA) GEOnet Names Server

• According to Strandow et al. (2011), this website "often contains more alternate spellings than Geonames." If you cannot find a location on GeoNames, therefore, try this server to find an alternate spelling, which you can search on GeoNames.

Global Gazetteer Version 2.3

• used by Huillery (2009) to geo-reference the localities where people interviewed by national household surveys in French West Africa live. 
• Also used in the construction of the ACLED data (see "Creating a Conflict Manuscript by Clionadh Raleigh).

JRC Fuzzy Gazetteer

• It retrieves place names even if the spelling does not match perfectly. This is useful because English spellings of foreign place names rarely are standardized.
• Gleditsch and Weidmann (2012) recommends