Does the most recent Core Places release have a complete list of all core places from the specified month as well as previous months? Or is it only for the specified month?
For example, if I am looking at Patterns trends from 2019 - present, can/should I just use the most recent Core Place data to identify locations? Or should I use the Core Places data release associated with each Patterns data release?
@Emma_Lee_Columbia_University Hello again! From month to month, some places may be dropped, but the changes are relatively small. The Data Science Resources has a section on calculating these differences.
Every ~6 months, the Patterns data is backfilled with the newest release of Places. The most recent backfill was in December 2020, so the data from 2018 until then uses the December 2020 release of Places. Every month from the most recent backfill until current uses the same month’s release of Places. So January 2021’s Patterns is based on January 2021’s Places. Typically, you are safe to use the most recent month of Places. One caveat (as covered in the previous thread) is that some Placekeys may have been updated since the most recent backfill, at which point you’d want to use Placekey’s Lineage API to make sure everything is apples-to-apples.
Thanks, again @Ryan_Kruse_MN_State. So if I am just starting a project but am looking at 2019 Places data, I am safe to use the May 2021 Core Places release as this will be the most updated information? Or is it possible that the most recent Core Places release will leave out businesses that have closed since being tracked in 2019 (and are therefore untracked currently)?
You are welcome @Emma_Lee_Columbia_University. It is possible the most recent Core Places release will leave out POIs that were in a Dec 2020 release (which was used for all 2019 Patterns), but it is very unlikely. And if the POI is left out of a more recent release, it’s probably for good reason (bad data, fixed issues, etc).
TLDR: You are safe to use the May 2021 Core Places release because it is the most updated information. If you notice that a suspicious portion of your 2019 POIs are not showing up in the May 2021 release, please let me or someone else know because that would be unexpected behavior.
Ok thank you! So just to double check – even if a business closed in the past (say in March 2019), it will still be listed in the most recent (May 2021) Core Places data?
@Emma_Lee_Columbia_University That is correct. In a best case scenario, SafeGraph has a value for the closed_on column, which indicates when the POI was closed. However, there are quite a few caveats to that currently, especially for non-branded POIs. For more details on that, you can check out this section of the Places Manual.