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August-2019 Release Notes (v2019-07-31)

over 5 years ago by Ryan Fox Squire

We hope you are all enjoying some summer holidays!
Lucky for you, when it comes to improving SafeGraph places, we don't take the summer off. 💁

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

  • Last month SG Places had 4,799,168 points-of-interest. This month SG Places has 4,823,365 points-of-interest (net + 24,197 places) 📈
  • We've added net 79 new brands 🎊

Including...

New Supermarkets 🌽 🍎

  • Xtramart (xtramart.com, SG_BRAND_3045ac8f0422d32c) with 105 places.
  • Jet (jetfoodstores.com, SG_BRAND_26d27b62b664dde1) with 48 places.
  • Valu Land (shopvaluland.com, SG_BRAND_3fd50390a02e7415eb76bcf03d8ef62e) with 4 places.
  • Star Market (starmarket.com, SG_BRAND_9d9362460bab2d260ba7a0f08b4bbd39) with 18 places.
  • Sav Mor (sav-mor.com, SG_BRAND_2433d3e3915789f1) with 3 places.

New hotels 🏨

New Local Food & Drink Brands 🍴 🍷

  • El Burrito Loco in the Greater Chicago Area (elburritoloco.com, SG_BRAND_82df1ebc3643f3c6) with 10 places.
  • Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries & Shakes in Austin, TX (mightyfineburgers.com, SG_BRAND_054f9e874f9d5821) with 5 places.
  • Tacolicious in San Francisco Bay Area (tacolicious.com, SG_BRAND_d0e991123ab7960f) with 5 places.
  • Juice Shop in San Francisco (juiceshop.com, SG_BRAND_efa3a9d13edb8328) with 6 places.
  • The Pie Hole in the Greater Los Angeles Area (thepieholela.com, SG_BRAND_d092f030b5fbe0c6) with 8 places.

And 52 more new brands across many categories!! 📈 📚

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Brands

  • Continuing from last month we have continued closely inspecting our brands 🔎 and discovered (and fixed!) a number of bugs 🐛. We found some errors involving over-labeling of POI for some brands. In other words, we were creating branded POI incorrectly at some locations. These fixes resulted in significant decreases in the total number of POI for those affected brands. The new count is correct, and for transparency we'd like to list some of these fixes as examples in no particular order.

    • Capital One, (SG_BRAND_69d59a17f8e7d182ae0e0368c9eec9ac). Net POI count change: -989. Bug: Was incorrectly including Allpoint ATM locations. Special thanks to our booth visitors at ESRI UC '19 for bringing this to our attention!
    • Daltile, (SG_BRAND_a2e1482743a5436b69066bc74c73a260). Net POI count change: -4,379. Bug: Was incorrectly including 3rd-party distributors of Daltile.
    • La-Z-boy, (SG_BRAND_a4b6e5c37c2c14ca7141456566978d42). Net POI count change: -1,810. Bug: Was incorrectly including many 3rd-party distributors of La-Z-Boy instead of only La-Z-Boy retail stores.
    • Ralphs, (SG_BRAND_5de385daebaef4e582bb3da40e9dcd5c). Net POI count change: --44. Bug: Accidentally including POIs for parent brand Kroger.
      • TCF Bank, (SG_BRAND_27501713cae44c7a12ea7b766781676a). Net POI count change: -423. Bug: Was accidentally counting stand-alone ATMs in some geographies.
      • PNC Financial, (SG_BRAND_497acb260184e50118775402a5fd6e23). Net POI count change: -217. Bug: Incorrectly listing ATMs as branches.
      • Raymond James Financial, (SG_BRAND_1d33d996f84ed96d957d92254c1ff53b). Net POI count change: -424. Bug: Was incorrectly including independent affiliates.
      • FedEx, (SG_BRAND_51f62da8d76022e2). Net POI count change: -1,042. Bug: Was incorrectly including non-branded FedEx authorized dealers (e.g., a Walgreens that offers FedEx labeling and shipping but is not actually a FedEx location).

  • We also made some corrections that resulted in increased brand counts.

    • Courtyard by Marriott, (SG_BRAND_2c2bf4588dcd1ba4c4fded5ddab543f4). Net POI count change: +363. Bug: Was incorrectly attributing some locations to the parent brand Marriott Hotels.
    • Destination Maternity, (SG_BRAND_75ab2a94702a9223). Net POI count change: +43. Bug: Was missing many locations due to error in data sourcing.
    • CrossFit, (SG_BRAND_ae6abf1aa02c01cfe560b9315db66b07). Net POI count change: +718. Bug: Was missing many CrossFit locations due to a data source error. CrossFit is a challenging brand because of the distribution model of authorized CrossFit instruction. We strive to distinguish gyms that simply offer CrossFit classes from points-of-interest that are actually named and branded CrossFit (the former should not be branded, the latter should be branded).

  • Bad SGPID Churn -- Bad sgpid churn are undesired failures to maintain consistent safegraph_place_ids (sgpids) between releases (see discussion in March 2019 release). We internally track and estimate our performance in this domain and share these numbers in our release notes for maximum transparency. In this release:

    • We dropped 37,958 sgpids (23,998 branded and 13,960 non-branded).
    • We added 111,908 sgpids (76,118 branded and 35,790 non-branded).
    • Some percent of these are true openings and closings (or new brands); the remainder are bad sgpid churn. We are continuing to work on better metrics to distinguish these cases.

  • Category Fill Rate We monitor category fill rate with 3 metrics: (1) category fill rate across the entire dataset, (2) category fill rate for branded POI, (3) category fill rate in the brand_info file (brand-level categories). We want all of these numbers to be 100%.

    • (1) All POI category fill rate. Last month 91%. This month 90%. 👎
    • (2) Branded POI category fill rate. Last month 100%. This month 100% 💯
    • (3) Brand-level category fill rate (brand_info file). Last month 100%. This month 100%. 💯

Geometry

Enhancements - Geometry

  • Improved and additional cartography and polygons. New or improved polygon geometries for over 22,000 POI :diamond-shape: including many primary and secondary schools.

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, we've increased to 94.9% precise polygons (up from 93.3 last month)! 📈 Here is how we are tracking on that metric over recent releases: Centroid-Radius Polygon Tracking. 

Also check out these new ways to get SafeGraph data: 
  * Need some extra data on other SafeGraph products? Check out the [SafeGraph Data Bar.](https://shop.safegraph.com/) 
  * 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).
  * Or just drop us a line! Your data needs are our data delights!