Welcome to the August 2021 release notes. 📝 Catch the highlights below! (2021-07-31/1627739802 shipped 2021-08-06).

Highlights

• store_id available as premium Core column for branded POIs, which provides another unique identifier for store locations.
• Improved geocoding for GB POIs 🎯
• A record-breaking month with 571 new brands 🏆, this includes 62 Warehousing and Storage brands 🏭 :

Table of Contents:

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

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

• We are excited to add a new premium column to Core Places! store_id is the unique ID associated with a store as provided and maintained by the store/brand itself, which can serve as useful join key for contextualizing transaction data. Coverage only applies to POIs with a safegraph_brand_id, see Core Places Schema for details. 💵
• GB open_hours improvement for branded POIs (up from 2.7% to 59.2%), see Summary Statistics page for all Core and Geometry column fill rates. 📈
• Last month, SG Places had 8,638,522 points-of-interest (including closed POIs). This month, SG Places has 8,795,394 points-of-interest (net 156,872 places). These are +136,950 US Places 🇺🇸 , -2,460 CA places 🇨🇦, and +22,382 GB places 🇬🇧 .
• We've added 571 brands 🏆 (+439 🇺🇸, +177 🇨🇦, +46 🇬🇧) view the full list here. Below are some highlights:
  • Redbox (SG_BRAND_8ef71dae032dc45d25ebf2c5fee7f15b) with 32k US point-only POI, meaning they are not bound by polygons. Learn more about these premium rows, which were introduced in the July 2021 Release.
  • ecoATM (SG_BRAND_d42c01ce047337b5fe96f780ddefd178) with 4,559 US point-only POI
  • Walmart Photo Center (SG_BRAND_069abfebc29feb04) with 1,795 US Places
  • +62 General Warehousing and Storage brands (493110) 🏭
  • +52 Full-Service Restaurants brands (722511) 🍴
  • +47 Limited-Service Restaurants brands (722513) 🍔

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 869 brands with at least one store closure in June 2021, and 775 brands with at least one store opening in June 2021.
  • Learn more about our open/close columns here.

Enhancements - Categories

This month, key changes include:

• +16k Insurance Agencies and Brokerages (524210)
• -10k Offices of Real Estate Agents and Brokers (531210) due to improvements in our deduplication model
• 1,844 POI changed from Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services (5416) to Investment Advice (523930)
• We've added 39k more "point-only" POIs to our Core Places offering, which are unique types of places that are not defined by polygons. Learn more about these premium rows, which were introduced in the July 2021 Release. New POI include:
• 32k Redbox machines: naics_code = 532282 (Video Tape and Disc Rental)
• 4,559 ecoATM smartphone recycling machines: naics_code = 443142 (Electronics Stores)
• 2,548 ATMs: naics_code = 522110 (Commercial Banking)

Category Fill Rate -- We monitor category fill rate with 2 metrics: (1) category fill rate across the entire dataset, and (2) category fill rate for branded POI. We want both of these numbers to be 100%.
(1) All POI category fill rate. Last month 99.4%. This month 99.4%.
(2) Branded POI category fill rate. Last month 100%. This month 100% 💯

Drops ⬇️

We ingest data from many sources, and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys churn over time. In this release, we dropped 349,279 Placekeys (76,420 branded and 272,859 non-branded), however we are investing in reducing the number of dropped Placekeys in future releases. To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, hit the Lineage API for free!

Major reasons for drops:

• As a result of improved address matching, ~40k Placekeys changed from a zzy address encoding (invalid Placekey address) to a non-zzy address encoding (valid Placekey) 👏
• ~84k dropped as result of improved deduplication 👯
• ~37k dropped due to changes to the Where part
• Read more about the structure of Placekeys here

Geometry

Enhancements - Geometry

• In July, we improved our address normalization and geocoding process in GB, resulting in 79k POI with improved geocodes. 🎯
• Closed POIs now include non-null geometry columns to bring further context to historical patterns data. 📅
• 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 74.4%
• This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 78.9% 📈 -- this metric increased significantly as preferred polygons were sourced in Great Britain.
  • 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.
• Last release, the percent of precise polygons was 96.3%
• This release, the percent precise polygons increased to 96.5%
  • Here is how we are tracking 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

• Neighborhood Patterns is now available in Canada! 🇨🇦 Contact your CSM to learn more or add to your subscription.

• In last month's delivery, SG Monthly Patterns had 4,534,432 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 4,523,166 points-of-interest (net -11,266).

• Last month, SG Monthly Patterns had 1,030,120,256 visits from 39,848,724 visitors (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 1,055,187,520 visits from 38,699,852 visitors (delta +25,067,268 visits, -1,148,873 visitors).

• In our Neighborhood Patterns product, which provides more generalized foot traffic flows across census block groups, for the US we have:

  • 2,149,537,024 raw stops (+37,376,084 from last month)
  • 467,565,152 raw devices (+13,023,872 from last month)
  • New stats from Canada Neighborhood Patterns will be added starting next month's release!

Interested in global POI coverage? Reach out to your customer success manager to learn more about how we're thinking about growing coverage internationally. 🌎 

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