Welcome to the December 2021 release notes, our last release of the year!
(2021-11-30/1638259204 shipped 2021-12-06).

Highlights

• +383 new brands
• +25k Point POI including GB EV Charging Stations (sub_category = "Other Gasoline Stations")
• Now have coverage for Ports (sub_category = "Port and Harbor Operations")
• New closed_on entries for over 154k additional POI
• Improved accuracy flagging POIs where enclosed = "true"

Core Places and Global Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Global Brands

SafeGraph is delivering more POI each month and this section covers highlights for:

• POI with geometry: POI delivered in Core Places, where each POI has an assigned polygon in SafeGraph Geometry which represents the POI footprint.
• Point-only POI: Introduced in July 2021 to include unique types of POI that aren't defined by polygons in SafeGraph Geometry. These are premium rows in Core Places and examples include ATMs, transit stops, kiosks and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.
• Global Brands: Introduced in October 2021 and covers 255k branded POI belonging to 787 brands around the world, using the same schema as Core Places.

This month SG Places has a grand total of 11,182,735, including POI from Core Places (with or without geometry), closed POI and global POI. This is a net increase of + 286,405 places from last month (+41,401🇺🇸, +5,214🇨🇦, +14,713🇬🇧, +76,400 outside these geographies):

• + 184,311 POI with geometry (+25,380 🇺🇸, +5,056 🇨🇦, +6,154 🇬🇧))
• + 25,694 point-only POI (+16,021 🇺🇸, +158🇨🇦, +8,559🇬🇧))
• + 76,400 global POI

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Global Brands

We improved our handling of Open/Closed dates for our longtail POI (or those POI that are not associated with a brand). Over 154k POIs now have a 'closed_on' date where they didn't before. However, please note that 134k of them will show 2021-10 as their 'closed_on' date even if they may have closed earlier. This is due to an influx of new information that month. You can find more details here.

Brands

We've added a grand total of 383 brands. View the whole list here and see the counts and highlights below:

• POI with geometry +277 brands (+180🇺🇸, +61🇨🇦, +73🇬🇧)):
  • Post Office UK (SG_BRAND_0ed4abb204103c36) with 7,880 POI
  • Kaufland (SG_BRAND_34ce9eb583433c16) with 1,151 POI
• Point-only POI +7 brands (+4🇺🇸, +2🇨🇦, +0🇬🇧)):
  • Coinsource Bitcoin ATM (SG_BRAND_7357d0f28c12c8df) with 1,737 POI
  • RockitCoin Bitcoin ATM (SG_BRAND_5cfb63ee8c48511d) with 1,505 POI
• Global Brands 99 brands:
  • Mere (SG_BRAND_04e1366eb4459b6d) with 20,117 POI
  • Walmart (SG_BRAND_04a8ca7bf49e7ecb4a32451676e929f0) with 2,428 POI
• Are we missing a brand or country? Please let us know here!

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 1,331 brands with at least one store closure in October 2021 and 122 brands with at least one store opening in October 2021:
  • For POI with geometry: 1,210 brands with at least one store closure and 1,193 with at least one store opening.
  • For point-only POI: 16 brands with at least one store closure and 19 with at least one store opening.
  • For global POI: 105 brands with at least one store closure and 122 with at least one store opening.
  • Learn more about our open/close columns here.

Categories

This month, key changes include:

• POI with geometry:
  • Limited-Service Restaurants (722513) with +37,814 POI
  • Convenience Stores (445120) with +22,636 POI
  • Port and Harbor Operations (488310) with +972 POI
• Point-only POI:
  • Other Gasoline Stations (447190) with + 12,792 POI, which are the GB EV Charging Stations

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 99.5%. This month 99.5%.
(2) Branded POI category fill rate. Last month 100.0%. This month 100.0%.

Drops ⬇️

• We are ingesting many sources and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys do drop over time. In this release, we dropped 52,832 Placekeys (9,861 branded and 42,971 non-branded).
• To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, you can try using the new Lineage API.

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 77.2%

• This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 77.9%

• See the September-2020 release notes for details about the enclosed column and tweaks to this metric.

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Geometry

• Some child brand stores located inside of their parent brand stores (e.g. a Pharmacy inside a Department store) were not correctly marked as enclosed=true. This has been corrected, meaning these child stores are now correctly associated with their parent POI.
• Centroid-Radius Polygons -- 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 96.5%.
  • This release, the percent of precise polygons was 96.5%.
    • 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 Monthly Patterns had 4,701,311 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 4,791,136 points-of-interest (net 89,825).

• Last month, SG Monthly Patterns had 1,122,878,720 visits from 34,981,804 visitors. This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 1,079,114,368 visits from 36,622,132 visitors (delta -43,764,444 visits, 1,640,327 visitors).

• Our Neighborhood Patterns product, provides more generalized foot traffic flows across census block groups. In the US we have 2,141,992,064 raw stops (-106,094,832 from last month).

• Neighborhood Patterns is available in Canada! 🇨🇦 Contact your CSM to learn more or add to your subscription. In CA we have 42,824,992 raw stops (-704,049 from last month).

SafeGraph Shop

What's New

• New Visualizations - Now you can view SafeGraph dataset samples on a map, right from our Shop landing page. And download the data for free if you like what you see.
• New Free Guide - We offer a free Starbucks dataset to get users started and now we're including a free guide tailor made for that dataset to provide even more of a boost.

[Places API] (https://docs.safegraph.com/reference/places-api-overview-new)

What's New

• Total Count - the Places API now includes totalCount for search requests to allow users to better understand the potential extent of their query
• Improved pagination experience with newly added fields to make it easier to loop through large queries
• Simplified field selection for items like brands using our enhanced Types
• New Date Types for all time_interval data to make it clearer what time period is being referenced (e.g. visits by day)
• Descriptive error responses to help debug API calls