Welcome to the April 2021 release notes 📝 (2021-03-31/1617177777 shipped 2021-04-07).

Highlights:

• We now have corporate office locations for 380+ of the Fortune 500 companies. This is why naics_code 551114 saw such a large count increase this month.

Table of Contents:

• Core Places & Brands
  • Core & Brand - Enhancements
  • Core & Brand - Bug Fixes & Known Issues
  • Categories - Enhancements
  • Drops
• Geometry
• Geometry - Enhancements
• Geometry - Bug Fixes & Known Issues
• Patterns
  • Patterns - Enhancements

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

• Last month SG Places had 6,995,036 points-of-interest (including closed POIs). This month SG Places has 6,986,485 points-of-interest (net -8,551 places). These are -10,462 US Places and +1,911 CA places.

• We've added 111 brands including 26 Full-Service Restaurants (722511)
  and 23 Limited-Service Restaurants (722513)
  New Brands Include...

  • REMAX (SG_BRAND_1ba9b5716a0d223ef444be8cdd83f5c1) with 2749 US and 169 CA places.
  • Scotchman (SG_BRAND_99757153db380470) with 1229 US.
  • Davi Nails (SG_BRAND_d4ad991c2ae24f7c) with 365 US and 0 CA places.
  • Charlotte Tilbury (SG_BRAND_077da9838188dcd2) with 305 US and 31 CA places.
  • Compass (SG_BRAND_51a81b34a3a3f332) with 286 US and 0 CA places.
  • and more!

Brand Openings and Closings

• We rely on POI metadata to track store openings and closings, and we are especially interested in understanding open/close dates for branded POIs. It can take more than a month to infer open/close dates, so we report brand open/close metrics on a one month delay.
  • In this release, we flagged 422 brands with at least one store closure in February 2021, and 377 brands with at least one store opening in February 2021.
  • Learn more about our open/close columns here.

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Brands

• We discovered a few brand count fluctuations as a result of updated sourcing and metadata bugs. These corrections resulted in significant changes in the total number of POIs for each affected brand, but the new count is correct. For transparency, we'd like to list some of these corrections as examples in no particular order:
  • Pacific Sales (SG_BRAND_c9deba94693f0dc718bbb1912d6f135d). Net POI count change: US: -213 CA: 0. Bug: Previously included all Best Buys, not just those w/Pacific Sales showrooms
  • Boards Inn & Suites (SG_BRAND_29ef451d7a4dfb7d). Net POI count change: US: -130 CA: 0. Bug: Previously included other Cobblestone properties (which we have as its own brand)
  • See's Candies (SG_BRAND_861672770a2e5494d97bb9058c420a0c). Net POI count change: US: -111 CA: 0. Bug: Previously included seasonal & pop-up (but wasn't distinguished as such)
  • GoLo (SG_BRAND_caf1c8f9222e9c6d). Net POI count change: US: -81 CA: 0. Bug: Previously included "AllStar" (not just GoLo Gas)

Enhancements - Categories

Below are some noteworthy category count changes:

• Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices (551114). Net POI change: US: +7,316 CA: +459
• Limited-Service Restaurants (722513). Net POI change: US: +1,272 CA: +203
• Shoe Stores (448210). Net POI change: US: +890 CA: -11
• All Other Health and Personal Care Stores (446199). Net POI change: US: +575 CA: +26
• Fuel Dealers (454310). Net POI change: US: +523 CA: +0

Drops ⬇️

We are ingesting many sources and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys do drop over time. In this release, we dropped 79,595 Placekeys (26,558 branded and 53,037 non-branded).
Major reasons for drops:

• ~29K dropped as result of improved deduplication
• ~22K dropped due to address encoding changes
• ~12K dropped due to changes to the POI encoding

To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, try using the new Lineage API.

Geometry

Enhancements - Geometry

• While OWNED polygons are preferred, it does not mean that SHARED polygons are inherently bad. It only means that the exact shape of each POI within the polygon is not discernible, but the general location can be identified by the centroid (latitude & longitude). 🎯

• When enclosed = FALSE, it indicates that there are reasonable means to derive a unique polygon for the POI (even when parent_placekey is not null), and we strive for 100% of branded, non-enclosed POIs to have polygon_class = "OWNED_POLYGON."

• Last month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs was 77.9%

• This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 76.6%

  • Here is how we're tracking on this metric across releases: OWNED vs SHARED Polygons in SafeGraph Places Release History.
  • See the September-2020 release notes for details about the enclosed column and tweaks to this metric.

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Geometry

• Centroid-Radius Polygons -- As discussed in March 2019 release notes. We internally track centroid-radius polygons vs precise polygons and strive for 100% precise polygons. You can measure this yourself using the is_synthetic column.
  • This release, precise polygons increased slightly to 96.0%.
    • Here is how we are tracking on this metric across releases: Centroid-Radius Polygon Tracking.
  • See here for a short list of POI categories which we do not require precise polygons

Patterns

Enhancements - Patterns

• In last month's delivery, SG Patterns had 4,402,283 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Patterns has 4,456,989 points-of-interest (US only) (net +54,706).

• Last month, SG Patterns had 747,684,480 visits from 31,115,312 visitors. This month, SG Patterns has 966,668,416 visits from 31,035,272 visitors (delta 218,983,904 visits, -80,039 visitors).

• In our Neighborhood Patterns product, where you can see more generalized foot traffic flows, we have:

  • 2,086,730,752 raw stops (+419,561,329 from last month)
  • 398,413,728 raw devices (+62,013,873 from last month)

• We unintentionally fixed a known bug in which customers receiving both weekly and monthly Patterns were receiving monthly specific columns in weekly patterns deliveries.

• Interested in foot traffic patterns for Canadian POIs? Reach out to your customer success manager for a sample! 🇨🇦

**International Expansion**
Want to see **SafeGraph Places across the pond?** [Learn more about our upcoming UK launch](https://www.safegraph.com/blog/coming-soon-uk-places-data)! 🇬🇧 

**In case you missed it,** check out [last month's release notes](https://docs.safegraph.com/changelog/march-2021-release-notes). 📝

**Calculating Diffs**
Curious to find the specific records that were either **added, deleted, or saw an attribute change** from one release to the next? Visit "Calculating Diffs" in our [Data Science Resources](https://docs.safegraph.com/docs/data-science-resources#section-calculating-diffs) to get started. 

**Fill Rates**
See the [Summary Statistics](https://docs.safegraph.com/docs/places-summary-statistics) page for all Core and Geometry column fill rates as well as a breakdown of POI count by `naics_code`.

**Explore**
Browse SafeGraph Core & Geometry data at your own pace [in these webmaps.](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8e5e066486f94f0ea698e507d46987f7)

**Also check out these new ways to get SafeGraph data: **
  * Need some extra data or other SafeGraph products? Check out the [SafeGraph Shop.](https://shop.safegraph.com/) 
  * Heavy AWS User?  Check out our [listings in the AWS Data Exchange](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results?filters=vendor_id&vendor_id=7d5ff8ca-105f-4856-9d99-5f2f1d83223c).
  * Are you an Esri or ArcGIS user? Check out our FREE data [SafeGraph Places in the Esri Marketplace](https://marketplace.arcgis.com/listing.html?id=3425348e4bee4059af2b353e52df43c2) and enjoy [SafeGraph Places in Esri Basemaps](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/mapping/new-places-in-esri-vector-basemaps/). 
  * Snowflake user? Check out our page on the [Snowflake Data Exchange](https://www.snowflake.com/datasets/safegraph/) :snowflake: 
  * Or just drop us a line! Your data needs are our data delights!