Welcome to the November 2021 release notes. (2021-10-29/1635494405 shipped 2021-11-05).

Highlights

+297 new brands
+138k POI for Offices of Physicians
+31k POI Religious Organizations
Improved address canonicalization in Canada 🇨🇦

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 ~179k branded POI belonging to 689 brands around the world, using the same schema as Core Places.

This month SG Places has a grand total of 10,896,330, including POI from Core Places (with or without geometry), closed POI and global POI. This is a net increase of + 395,765 places from last month (+270,658🇺🇸, +10,379🇨🇦, +48,940 🇬🇧, +65,788 outside these geographies):

+ 306,949 POI with geometry (+248,669 🇺🇸, +10,226 🇨🇦, +48,054 🇬🇧)
+ 23,028 point-only POI (+21,989 🇺🇸, +153🇨🇦, +886🇬🇧)
+ 65,788 global POI

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Global Brands

We improved address canonicalization in Canada, and as a result, ~535k CA street_address values changed. Most changes are street name abbreviations from "Street" >> "St" and "Road" >> "Rd." These changes have not introduced Placekey churn.

Brands

We've added a grand total of 297 brands (+102🇺🇸, +19🇨🇦, +25 🇬🇧). View the whole list here and see the counts and highlights below:

POI with geometry +127 brands (+98🇺🇸, +19🇨🇦, +25 🇬🇧):
- IdentoGO (SG_BRAND_e4b4e2f6727b8f83) with 1,336 POI
- Target Optical (SG_BRAND_5c0ad7a755004406) with 543 POI
Point-only POI +4 brands (+4🇺🇸,):
- PNC Financial Services ATM (SG_BRAND_cc37815db70b9964) with 6,686 POI
- CoinCloud Bitcoin ATM (SG_BRAND_b1fb0a2f5e5f0de6) with 3,762 POI
- CoinFlip Bitcoin ATM (SG_BRAND_b2e345c3b4eaa7dc) with 2,982 POI
- LInkNYC (SG_BRAND_81812085fa0e0a6d) with 1,812 POI
Global Brands +166 brands:
- H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) (SG_BRAND_318848b77682c5ecffe061bb49b18986) with 3,548 POI
- Adidas (SG_BRAND_4db6adde7999319bfb67bee86942f8e9) with 1,980 POI
- Intimissimi (SG_BRAND_970a992a37efa923) with 1,801 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 1,004 brands with at least one store closure in September 2021 and 1,148 brands with at least one store opening in September 2021:
- For POI with geometry: 910 brands with at least one store closure and 1,048 with at least one store opening.
- For point-only POI: 6 brands with at least one store closure and 7 with at least one store opening.
- For global POI: 88 brands with at least one store closure and 93 with at least one store opening.
- Learn more about our open/close columns here.

Drops ⬇️

We are ingesting many sources and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys do drop over time. In this release, we dropped 39,257 Placekeys (16,238 branded and 23,019 non-branded).
To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, you can try using the new Lineage API.
Major reasons for drops:
- ~4.8k as a result of source upgrades
- ~6.5k as a result of deduplication

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 77.8%
This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 77.2%
- 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 -- 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%.
  - 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 Monthly Patterns had 4,662,583 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 4,701,311 points-of-interest (net 38,728).
Last month, SG Monthly Patterns had 1,069,966,016 visits from 35,246,172 visitors. This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 1,122,878,464 visits from 34,981,592 visitors (net 52,912,392 visits, delta -264,579 visitors).
Our Neighborhood Patterns product, provides more generalized foot traffic flows across census block groups. In the US we have 2,248,087,040 raw stops (net 86,554,464 from last month).
Neighborhood Patterns is available in Canada! 🇨🇦 Contact your CSM to learn more or add to your subscription. In CA we have: 43,529,040 raw stops (net 629,432 from last month).

SafeGraph Shop

What's New

Revamped Get Started page - with quick search suggestions to get you exploring data faster.
Data Quality Guarantee. If you find a significant issue with your online purchase (such as inaccurate data), then please contact us and we will refund you. Up to $500.00.
Limited-time promotions. In order to make data more accessible we now offer limited-time promotions every few weeks. Check back often.
"Match" is now called "Enrich Data". Already have a list of places? Match it with our data to enrich it. We will add in our Placekey data to yours for free.
New data filter request option. Searching for a brand or category and can't find it? Easily request missing brands or categories.

Enhancements

Express checkout - skip the step of account creation or login when making a purchase. We will automatically create an account with your email address, or apply your purchase to an existing account that matches your provided email.
Faster sign for academics. Just make sure to use your .edu email address at checkout.
Start Over button. Reset your filters and go back to the Get Started page.

Coming soon

Interactive map - which shows off SafeGraph data in action!
More free datasets - to help with evaluations!
Weekly patterns - choose to get patterns data by week or month.
Point Places - choose to add in ATMs, EV Chargers, and Transit stops in your Core Places download.

Known Issues

Some datasets may become unavailable to add to your cart depending on the filters that you have set. We are aware of this issue and plan on introducing an improved experience soon.

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/october-2021-release-notes). 📝

November-2021 Release Notes