Why are there these discrepancies when comparing the updated Core Places with previous Patterns releases?

Hi Everyone. I have merged the May release of Core Places data with some of the Patterns data based on “safegraph_place_id” however I have found that in my merged data, there are now 2 placekey columns. It appears that many safegraph_place_ids have multiple placekeys associated with it.

For example, when merging the May 2021 release of Core Places data with the February 2021 release of Patterns, many pois use different placekeys for a shared safegraph_place_id

However, I also noticed that this error does not occur when merging the May 2021 release of Core Places with the May 2021 release of Patterns. Each safegraph_place_id has a unique placekey

Why are there these discrepancies when comparing the updated Core Places with previous Patterns releases? Thank you!

Hi @Emma_Lee_Columbia_University! As Placekey gets better, Placekeys are occasionally updated over time, so this is expected behavior. Usually this is to remove duplicates or fix other issues. I believe the vast majority of Placekeys are unaffected. The goal is that less and less issues arise over time, so more of the Placekeys are stable.

In the meantime, you can use the Placekey Lineage API to get the latest update of a Placekey, along with its predecessors. Is that helpful?

Hi @Ryan_Kruse_MN_State this is very helpful, thank you!