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January-2022 Release Notes (01/07/2022)

over 2 years ago by [email protected]

Welcome to the new year with the January 2022 release notes! :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks:
You'll notice a worldwide theme as we continue adding places around the globe :earth-americas:
(2021-12-28/1640723734 shipped 2022-01-07).

Highlights

  • +132 new brands across 159 countries :earth-americas: :earth-africa: :earth-asia:
  • +51k Global EV Charging Stations (sub_category = "Other Gasoline Stations") :electric-plug:
  • +5k Ports (sub_category = "Port and Harbor Operations") in 172 countries, most with drawn polygons :ship:
  • +5 New Normalized Visit columns in our Patterns product for even quicker analysis of foot traffic data :traffic-light:

Places

Enhancements

SafeGraph is delivering more POI each month in countries around the world. This month SG Places has a grand total of 11,320,448, including POI with or without geometry and closed POI. This is a net increase of 222,907 places from last month (+66,106🇺🇸, +3,779🇨🇦, +39,131🇬🇧, +113,891 :earth-asia: outside these geographies):

  • + 112,358 POI with geometry (+61,855 🇺🇸, +3,773 🇨🇦, +37,930 🇬🇧, +8,800 :earth-africa:)
  • + 73,373 point-only POI (+4,251 🇺🇸, +6🇨🇦, +1,201🇬🇧) +67,915 :earth-americas:)

Our United Kingdom coverage has expanded to include places in Northern Ireland. Note the iso_country_code for these new POI will of course still show GB :gb:

Brands

We've added a grand total of 132 brands across 159 countries. Some of the highlights:

  • Notable brands :earth-africa:

    • FamilyMart (SG_BRAND_cdcbde1a7349569e) with 13,633 POI :fuelpump: :convenience-store:
    • Carrefour (SG_BRAND_467d8ded6f3456a3) with 6,449 POI :convenience-store:

  • Point POI +4 brands :red-circle::

    • Bitcoin of America (SG_BRAND_0ed4abb204103c36) with 1,651 POI :atm:
    • Bank of Ireland ATM (SG_BRAND_b704e29a53b06884) with 923 POI :atm:

  • :eyes: Are we missing a brand or country? :eyes: 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 1,037 brands with at least one store closure in November 2021 and 1,258 brands with at least one store opening in November 2021:

Categories

This month, key changes include:

  • POI with geometry:
    • Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores (447110) with +49,221 POI :fuelpump: :convenience-store:
    • Lessors of Residential Buildings and Dwellings (531110) with +37,736 POI which are our apartment buildings :department-store:
    • New Car Dealers (441110) with +23,819 POI :car:
    • Port and Harbor Operations (488310) with +4,498 POI :ship:
  • Point-only POI:
    • Other Gasoline Stations (447190) with +51,326 POI which are our EV Charging Stations :electric-plug:
    • Bus and Other Motor Vehicle Transit Systems (485113) with +15,097 POI :busstop: :bus:

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%. :100:

Drops ⬇️

  • We are ingesting many sources and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys do drop over time. In this release, we dropped 30,728 Placekeys (11,473 branded and 19,255 non-branded).
  • To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, you can try using the Lineage API.

Geometry

New Polygons

  • We add new polygons along with our new places each and every month. In this month's release, we added coverage for some of the world's most important shipping ports. Below are just a few of these beautiful polygons:
1090

Port of Lewisporte, Canada

1440

El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain

1170

Limassol Port, Cyprus

Patterns

Enhancements - Patterns

  • In last month's delivery, SG Monthly Patterns had 4,791,136 POI (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 4,653,942 POI (net -137,194).

  • Last month, SG Monthly Patterns had 1,079,114,368 visits from 36,622,132 visitors. This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 1,081,150,080 visits from 34,769,824 visitors (delta 2,035,827 visits, -1,852,305 visitors).

  • Our Neighborhood Patterns product, provides more generalized foot traffic flows across census block groups. In the US we have 2,085,500,544 raw stops (-56,491,612 from last month).

  • Neighborhood Patterns is available in Canada! 🇨🇦 Contact your CSM to learn more or add to your subscription. In CA we have 38,474,408 raw stops (-4,350,586 from last month).

New Normalized Visit Columns

We are introducing 5 new columns that take different approaches to normalizing our raw visit counts. Each of these columns uses a different method, allowing you to choose the one that fits your use case best 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

  • normalized_visits_by_state_scaling - Raw visits scaled using the mobile device sampling rate for the state in which the POI is located.
  • normalized_visits_by_region_naics_visits - Raw visits divided by the sum(raw_visit_counts) to the 'naics_code' in the same state or province during the same time period. This measures changes in the category-specific popularity of the POI over time.
  • normalized_visits_by_region_naics_visitors - Raw visits divided by the sum(raw_visitor_counts) to the 'naics_code' in the same state or province during the same time period. This measures changes in the visits per devices that visited the same category in SafeGraph's panel to the POI over time.
  • normalized_visits_by_total_visits - Raw visits divided by the total_visits in the same state or province during the same time period. This measures changes in the relative popularity of POI over time.
  • normalized_visits_by_total_visitors - Raw visits divided by the total_devices_seen in the same state or province during the same time period. This measures changes in the visits per device in SafeGraph's panel to the POI over time.

These columns are not included by default for existing deliveries to prevent any breaking changes. If you'd like to receive any of these new columns, please contact your CSM.

SafeGraph Shop

What's New

  • Support for the new Normalized Visit Columns - Available in all monthly and weekly Shop downloads :chart-with-upwards-trend:

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

What's New

  • Multi-Week Queries - the Places API now supports requests with multiple weeks of Patterns data in a single query :chart-with-upwards-trend: :chart-with-upwards-trend: :chart-with-upwards-trend:
  • Improved Address Matching - Searching by address now accounts for more potential address variations, meaning a higher level of accuracy for each search :house: :mag-right: