Let's get acquainted with some of the key terminology! Here, you will get brief explanations of each concept. For detailed explanations, you may browse through the given links.
Place
A Place represents any Point of Interest or POI. These POI represent physical locations like restaurants, retail stores, grocery stores, parks, airports and much more.
PlaceKey
Placekey is a free, universal standard identifier for any physical place so that the data of those places can be shared and easily joined across organizations. You can generate a PlaceKey for a location here.
NAICS codes
SafeGraph uses the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) developed by the US Census Bureau, which consists of a numeric NAICS code up to 6 digits in length. Although this taxonomy was developed in the US, we have found it just as useful for categorizing POIs in other countries as well and will continue to use it until a better alternative presents itself.
Brand
A Brand represents a SafeGraph brand, which is defined as a logo or branded store which has multiple locations all under the same logo or store banner. SafeGraph provides brand attributes for major brands in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain (McDonald's, AMC, Macy's, Chevrolet, Whole Foods Market, etc.).
Children and Parent Places
Some POIs are characterized by a broader footprint and encompass smaller POIs within their borders. We colloquially refer to the larger, containing POI as the parent and the smaller POI as the child.
For example, a mall may be the parent, and the stores within are the children.
We try to flag where these overlapping relationships exist in the real world by setting the parent_placekey of the smaller POI equal to the placekey of the larger, encompassing POI.