Welcome to the September 2021 release notes. Catch the highlights below! (2021-08-31/1630442778 shipped 2021-09-03).

Highlights

• Nearly 500k apartments and other multi-family housing POIs available as premium Core Places rows in the US
• Over 500k transit stops added to Core Places as point POIs in the US
• Major improvements to Placekey stability
• 142 new 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
• SafeGraph Shop
  • SafeGraph Shop - Enhancements

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

• We're excited to announce major new POI types in Core Places in the US. We've added nearly 500k apartments and other multi-family housing POIs as premium rows to Core Places, with Geometry for these locations to come in October. We've also added over 500k transit stops - these are point POIs, meaning they are only associated with a centroid and do not come with a polygon geometry.
• Last month SG Places had 8,795,394 points-of-interest (including closed POIs). This month SG Places has 9,946,995 points-of-interest (net +1,151,601 places). These are +1,149,361 US Places, +3,144 CA places and -904 GB places.
• We've added 142 brands (+111 🇺🇸, +33 🇨🇦, +21 🇬🇧) - view the full list here! Below are some highlights:
  • Walgreens Pharmacy (SG_BRAND_33ef43259b465c12) with 9,055 POI
  • Bitcoin Depot Bitcoin ATM (SG_BRAND_81dd9679f8f80f51) with 4,028 POI
  • Walmart Auto Care Center (SG_BRAND_98ff0b459472971a) with 2,753 POI
  • +17 Full-Service Restaurants (722511)
  • +13 Home Health Care Services (621610)
  • +13 Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities (522320) - aka brands

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 874 brands with at least one store closure in July 2021, and 1,016 brands with at least one store opening in July 2021.
  • Learn more about our open/close columns here.

Enhancements - Categories

This month, key changes include:

• +12k Offices of Physicians (621111)
• +10k Pharmacies and Drug Stores (446110)
• Over 525k new point POIs, including transit stops (4851), ATMs (522110, 522320), and EV charging stations (447190). Learn more about these premium rows, which were introduced in the July 2021 Release.

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 99.5%.
(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 19,359 Placekeys (8,667 branded and 10,692 non-branded). Thanks to enhancements to Placekey stability, this is a major improvement from last month, when we dropped nearly 350k. To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, you can try using the new Lineage API.

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 78.9%
• This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 78.2%
  • 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 4,523,166 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 4,610,349 points-of-interest (net 87,183).
• Last month, SG Monthly Patterns had 1,055,187,520 visits from 38,699,852 visitors. This month, SG Monthly Patterns has 1,076,756,352 visits from 36,401,128 visitors (delta +21,568,752 visits, -2,298,722 visitors).
• In our Neighborhood Patterns product, which provides more generalized foot traffic flows across census block groups. In US we have:
  • 2,146,253,824 raw stops (+39,635,924 from last month)
  • 427,674,784 raw devices (-29,294,200 from last month)
• Neighborhood Patterns is now available in Canada! 🇨🇦 Contact your CSM to learn more or add to your subscription. In CA we have:
  • 43,072,228 raw stops (+153,225 from last month)
  • 10,583,605 raw devices (-12,647 from last month)

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Patterns

• There was a bug affecting the visitor_home_aggregation column in the Monthly Patterns release for July 2021 and the Weekly Patterns releases for July 19 & 26 and August 2, 9 & 16. This bug caused the visitor_home_aggregation column to display the same values as the visitor_home_cbgs column (visitor_home_cbgs was not affected). The bug has been corrected as of the August 23 Weekly Patterns and the September 2021 Monthly Patterns releases.

SafeGraph Shop

New Data Available

• New hospital datasets by Care Precise
• New 'Total Property Profiles' dataset by Infutor
• Added the year 2018 for Monthly Patterns by SafeGraph
• SafeGraph datasets (Core Places, Geometry, and Monthly Patterns) will be updated mid-month with our September data release. We are working towards eliminating any delay between our data releases and shop availability next month.

Enhancements

• Safari desktop browser support (full mobile browser support coming later this year)
• Bookmark your page to come back to your favorite set of filters. Shopping cart state is now saved in the url.
• More intuitive data filtering
• Easier-to-use filters (geography, brand, and category)
• Better messaging around datasets that are unavailable with your chosen filters

Bugs Fixed and Known Issues

• Fixed issue where shopping cart was lost after navigating between shop pages or attempting to sign in/sign out.
• Fixed an issue with our one-click download button on the Downloads screen.

Coming later in September

• Weekly Patterns dataset by SafeGraph
• Point POI records in Core Places (ATMs, EV Chargers, and Transit Stops)
• Faster checkout. Don't worry about creating an account first.
• New 'Feedback' page for providing suggestions to the shop team here at SafeGraph.

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/august-2021-release-notes). 📝