February - 2021 Release Notes

[Jeff_Ho_SafeGraph]

Welcome to the February 2021 release notes (2021-01-31/1612090943 shipped 2021-02-04).

Highlights

• Placekey Lineage API is live. This is useful since Placekeys may change over time, as we discover and merge duplicate places.

Table of Contents:

• Core Places & Brands
  • Core & Brand - Enhancements
  • Core & Brand - Bug Fixes & Known Issues
  • Categories - Enhancements
  • Drops
• Geometry
  • Geometry - Enhancements
  • Geometry - Bug Fixes & Known Issues
• Patterns
  • Patterns - Enhancements

Core Places and Brands

Enhancements - Core Places and Brands

• Last month SG Places had 6,996,247 points-of-interest (including closed POIs). This month SG Places has 6,987,432 points-of-interest (net -8,815 places). These are -12,714 US Places and +3,899 CA places.
• We’ve added +38 brands including +6 Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores (447110)
  and +5 Cosmetics, Beauty Supplies, and Perfume Stores (446120)
  New Brands Include…
  • MassMutual (SG_BRAND_0e2d1079fcd998e0) with 1,093 US places.
  • Morgan Stanley (SG_BRAND_60aab434bb51c150) with 454 US places.
  • Express Factory Outlet (SG_BRAND_4c945c3dccbefc60) with 213 US places.
  • CREVIER (SG_BRAND_1e7ff06c74196a86) with 170 US places.
  • and 34 more!

Bug Fixes and Known Issues - Core Places and Brands

• We discovered a few brand count fluctuations as a result of updated sourcing and metadata bugs. These corrections resulted in significant changes in the total number of POIs for each affected brand, but the new count is correct. For transparency, we’d like to list some of these corrections as examples in no particular order:
  • Aio Wireless ( SG_BRAND_f65a7f441703711f95020392584b87f8 ). Net POI count change: US: -46 CA: 0 . Bug: Duplicates w/Cricket Wireless (to which it merged under in 2014)
  • Storage Pros ( SG_BRAND_29e46f1526330e4b591d75531238b056 ). Net POI count change: US: -856 CA: 0 . Bug: Removed affiliate storage brands (for which we already had and were duplicates)
  • Pet Valu ( SG_BRAND_c3721b7f7bffe146b60737b80bd9f47d ). Net POI count change: US: 0 CA: -83 . Bug: Duplicates w/children Bosleys & Tisol (for which we already had brands)
  • Freshii ( SG_BRAND_cc759ce657fee52c1a1e47715fa23aba ). Net POI count change: US: -75 CA: -142 . Bug: Included non-Freshii locations before
  • sweetgreen ( SG_BRAND_a5ea795ab3769f0392e3658d9e64e003 ). Net POI count change: US: -713 CA: 0 . Bug: Included sg Outpost (pick-up locations)
• We resolved the issue of some brands having multiple NAICS code. Here is a full list of the impacted brands.

Enhancements - Categories

Below are some noteworthy category count changes:

• Offices of Physicians (except Mental Health Specialists) (621111) . Net POI count change: US: + 1,832 CA: +59
• Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores (447110) . Net POI count change: US: +1,431 CA: +453
• Direct Life Insurance Carriers (524113) . Net POI count change: US: +1,547
• Religious Organizations (813110) . Net POI count change: US: -14,146 CA: +2 . This drop reflects our improvements in identifying and removing duplicate POIs within this category.

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 99.2%. This month 99.2%.
(2) Branded POI category fill rate. Last month 100%. This month 100%

Drops

We are ingesting many sources and due to source changes and processing changes, Placekeys do drop over time. In this release, we dropped 84,802 Placekeys (25,680 branded and 59,122 non-branded).
Major reasons for drops:

• ~46K dropped as result of improved deduplication, including:
  • ~16K in the category Religious Organizations (813110)
  • ~5K in the category Child Day Care Services (624410)
  • ~4K in the category Elementary and Secondary Schools (611110)
• ~20k dropped due to changes to the Where part

To keep track of the status, predecessors, and latest successor of each Placekey, you can try using the new Lineage API.

We are continuing to improve metrics to distinguish good vs. bad churn.

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 77.7%
  • This month, the percent OWNED polygons for branded, non-enclosed POIs is 78.1% :chart-with-upwards-trend:
    • 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 – 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, precise polygons increased slightly to 95.8%.
    • 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
• Some of our Westfield POIs were not associated with the right polygons. In an effort to fix that, we inadvertently churned 10 Placekeys. Here is a mapping of the old Placekeys to the new. Of course, you can also use the new Lineage API to look up the status of each Placekey.

Patterns

Enhancements - Patterns

• In last month’s delivery, SG Patterns had 4,412,421 points-of-interest (US only). This month, SG Patterns has 4,403,563 points-of-interest (US only) (net -8,858).
• Last month, SG Patterns had 818,360,020 visits from 35,436,537 visitors. This month, SG Patterns has 785,676,535 visits from 35,674,674 visitors (delta -32,683,485 visits, +238,137 visitors).
• In our Neighborhood Patterns product, where you can see more generalized foot traffic flows, we have:
  • 1,869,772,310 raw stops ( -26,443,214 from last month)
  • 371,517,371 raw devices ( -14,914,449 from last month)
• Interested in foot traffic patterns for Canadian POIs? Reach out to your customer success manager for a sample!

**International Expansion**
Want to see **SafeGraph Places across the pond?** [Learn more about our upcoming UK launch](https://www.safegraph.com/blog/coming-soon-uk-places-data)! 🇬🇧

**In case you missed it,** check out [last month's release notes](https://docs.safegraph.com/changelog/january-2021-release-notes). 📝

**Calculating Diffs**
Curious to find the specific records that were either **added, deleted, or saw an attribute change** from one release to the next? Visit "Calculating Diffs" in our [Data Science Resources](https://docs.safegraph.com/docs/data-science-resources#section-calculating-diffs) to get started.

**Fill Rates**
See the [Summary Statistics](https://docs.safegraph.com/docs/places-summary-statistics) page for all Core and Geometry column fill rates as well as a breakdown of POI count by `naics_code` .

**Explore**
Browse SafeGraph Core & Geometry data at your own pace [in these webmaps.](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8e5e066486f94f0ea698e507d46987f7)

**Also check out these new ways to get SafeGraph data:**

* Need some extra data or other SafeGraph products? Check out the [SafeGraph Data Bar.](https://shop.safegraph.com/)
* Heavy AWS User? Check out our [listings in the AWS Data Exchange](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results?filters=vendor_id&vendor_id=7d5ff8ca-105f-4856-9d99-5f2f1d83223c).
* 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) and enjoy [SafeGraph Places in Esri Basemaps](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/mapping/new-places-in-esri-vector-basemaps/).
* Snowflake user? Check out our page on the [Snowflake Data Exchange](https://www.snowflake.com/datasets/safegraph/) :snowflake:
* Or just drop us a line! Your data needs are our data delights!