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September-2019 Release Notes (v2019-08-28)

over 4 years ago by Ryan Fox Squire

Do you remember? The 21st night of September?
SG Places was changing the minds of pretenders. :earth-americas: :dash: & :fire:
This year you definitely will remember, because you will be enjoying the SafeGraph 2019 September release!

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

  • Last month SG Places had 4,823,365 points-of-interest. This month SG Places has 4,824,157 points-of-interest (net + 792 places) :round-pushpin:
  • We've added net 393 new brands :confetti-ball: :clock3: :clock9: :clock3:
    • We are getting better at better at local and regional chains. The mean & median number of places for these new brands is 24 & 11.

New Brands Include...

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Brands

  • Bug Fixes

  • 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.

  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations, (SG_BRAND_774c3aacc712631892816cc5fb59229a). Net POI count change: -3505. Bug: Incorrectly including all properties of parent company Holiday Inn.

  • Kroger, (SG_BRAND_1f852a23da4b7250). Net POI count change: -984. Bug: Incorrectly including places for child companies, incorrectly all labeled as Kroger.

  • Fred Meyer, (SG_BRAND_605bde5ed94e94da51adbfe6cf14e0c4). Net POI count change: -1271. Bug: Incorrectly including places for other subsidiaries of parent (Kroger), incorrectly labeled as Fred Meyer.

  • Johnston & Murphy, (SG_BRAND_9e1966dcde8d1a4e43bbcad084560d20). Net POI count change: -1188. Bug: Incorrectly including some locations that are only distributors of the brand, but not true branded locations.

  • OshKosh B'gosh, (SG_BRAND_34e0f7d7aa0633e1a2f38bd9ffbefe9f). Net POI count change: -636. Bug: Incorrectly included locations for parent company (Carter's).

  • Z-Spray, (SG_BRAND_5d49d89bf455fd7b1343d123dcbaead1). Net POI count change: -888. Bug: Z-Spray does not qualify as a SafeGraph brand, it is sold from distributor partner locations, none of which are branded 'Z-Spray'. It has no brick-and-mortar locations of its own.

  • TD Bank, (SG_BRAND_a270529277e11434ce7a40cff6c21217). Net POI count change: -600. Bug: Was incorrectly including ATM-only locations.

  • First Tennessee Bank, (SG_BRAND_186bce691b86261c82d885de394b2e4b). Net POI count change: -125. Bug: Was incorrectly including locations for sister company, Capital Bank

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

  • Capital One, (SG_BRAND_69d59a17f8e7d182ae0e0368c9eec9ac). Net POI count change: 313. Bug: Capital One was accidentally dropped in the August release, so we are adding it back. We are very sorry Capital One. We will do better.

  • Ralphs, (SG_BRAND_5de385daebaef4e582bb3da40e9dcd5c). Net POI count change: 188. Bug: Ralphs was intentionally missing due to a data source error affecting quality. Now that error is resolved and Ralphs can join all its friends in SG Brands.

  • Best Buy, (SG_BRAND_2c648ef84225e10f0499e7d255eacf71). Net POI count change: 160. Bug: Incorrectly missing locations due to a data source error. There are still some missing locations (known errors) that we are actively fixing for October release.

  • Expected Changes

  • Aveda, (SG_BRAND_8acb9465e5dff7534577e5d44c27d773). Net POI count change: 86. Change: We are now including both "Aveda Store" and "Aveda Institute" under this brand.

  • Payless Shoes, (SG_BRAND_7b57044cdebc44f5ed80e0f8dda291e2). Net POI count change: -820. Change: Payless Shoes, you will be missed.

  • Hey thanks for reading our release notes! Please enjoy this coupon for $500 in the SafeGraph Data Bar: DoYouRememberSeptRelease. Because we like you.

  • 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 37,978 sgpids (23,323 branded and 14,655 non-branded).
    • We added 38,770 sgpids (19,309 branded and 19,461 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 92%. :+1:
    • (2) Branded POI category fill rate. Last month 100%. This month 100% :100:
    • (3) Brand-level category fill rate (brand_info file). Last month 100%. This month 100%. :100:

Geometry

Enhancements - Geometry

  • Improved and additional cartography and polygons. New or improved polygon geometries for over 50,000 in US and CA (coming in the September release!) including malls, museums, and more. POI :diamond-shape:
738

American Civil War Museum Of Ohio (sg:05015c4ea8884f4ba2c1d9820b7efa87 )
217 South Washington Street
Tiffin, Oh

One of over 50,000 new & improved polygons in the September-2019 release.

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 95.0% precise polygons (up from 94.9 last month)! :chart-with-upwards-trend: 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!