Categories

Foursquare attempts to apply accurate and granular categorization to each of our POI records. In order to accomplish this, we leverage our own proprietary taxonomy of 1K+ categories. Please see below for more information on how to use Foursquare Categories.

Categories are assigned to a Foursquare Place in two distinct attributes, both of which are included in Foursquare's 25 core attributes.

• Category IDs
  • A unique ID of the most granular category (or categories)
• Category Labels
  • A unique label, e.g. Dining and Drinking

NOTE: The maximum number of categories that can be assigned to a POI record is three

Category Taxonomy

Foursquare Places includes a hierarchical taxonomy of categories from which each POI record is classified. The ten parent categories are:

• Arts and Entertainment
• Business and Professional Services
• Community and Government
• Dining and Drinking
• Event
• Health and Medicine
• Landmarks and Outdoors
• Retail
• Sports and Recreation
• Travel and Transportation

See below for a table of the full taxonomy.

NOTE: We aim to preserve all existing category IDs. Therefore, when new categories are added to the taxonomy, they are inserted at the tail of the list. As such, you will see instances of related categories whose IDs are distant from one another.

Categories that specify a list of "Supported Countries" can only appear on venues in those countries. All other categories are supported globally by default.

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Taxonomies Available via Github

• The Countries Supported Taxonomy is also available to view and download on Github (in json).
• The NAICS & SIC Taxonomy is also available to view and download on Github.