Release Notes
December 2023
What’s New
- EV Charger coverage increases in MY, VN, AE, and SG. Increases are up to the following counts depending on the cut of the data received.
- MY: 664
- VN: 34
- AE: 589
- SG: 593
- Improved freshness of Drinking and Dining data in the US. 46% of Drinking and Dining POIs in the US have been refreshed in the past 6 months. This is up from 38% that had been refreshed in the past 6 months in September.
30-Day Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,176,661
- US: 22,531,927
- Rest of world: 103,644,734
- POIs added in last 30 days: 29,493
- US: 137
- Rest of world: 29,356
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 34,556
- US: 1,909
- Rest of world: 32,647
- Validated in last 30 days: 4,148,824
- This is the number of POIs that have a date_refreshed value, which is the date when we last saw any single reference refreshed from crawl, Listing Syndicators, users or human validation for a given POI.
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,034,318
- US: 1,482,979
- Rest of world:
- POIs added in last 30 days: 828
- US: 8
- Rest of world: 820
- Validated in last 30 days: 178,680
- US: 17
- Rest of world: 178,663
November 2023
What's New
- Added 23 new chains in the US. Including: Coffee Beanery, DGX, Duchess Shoppe, Egg Harbor Café, Erik''s DeliCafe, Fannie May Fine Chocolates, Farm Stores, Fastlane, Gertrude Hawk Chocolates, Gourmet Latté, Han-Dee Hugo's, Ike's Love & Sandwiches, IT'SUGAR, Kohr Bros, Lee's Discount Liquor, Lolli and Pops, Marylou's Coffee, Payless Liquors, Rhodes 101, Seasons Corner Market, Smallcakes Cupcakery, Sugar Factory, The Coffee Tree Roasters. For a full list, please see Chains table.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,181,144
- US: 22,533,628
- Rest of World: 103,647,516
- POIs added in last 30 days: 305,477
- US: 17,310
- Rest of World: 288,167
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 57,129
- US: 12,913
- Rest of World: 44,216
- Validated in last 30 days: 3,902,086
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,031,875
- US: 1,483,009
- Rest of World: 1,548,866
- POIs added in last 30 days: 14,131
- US: 7,012
- Rest of World: 7,119
- Validated in last 30 days: 433,034
- US: 286,190
- Rest of World: 146,844
October 2023
What's New
- Improved Open/Closed Scores for 5 Countries (AT, BR, CA, ES, JP)
- We improve Open/Closed scores using a Machine Learning algorithm that takes into account 100+ features like the trends in check ins, edits, photos in FSQ Consumer apps.
- With this update, we have improved and standardized the confidence across the 5 countries.
- When we say a place is VeryLikelyOpen/VeryLikelyClosed, we have 95% confidence that the POI is Open/Closed respectively. That is more than 6% improvement for the VeryLikelyOpen bucket.
- When POIs fall under LikelyOpen+VeryLikelyOpen or LikelyClosed+VeryLikelyClosed, we have 80% confidence that the place is Open/Closed respectively.
- Depending on the precision requirements, customers can use a combination that works best for them.
- When we look at the POI distribution across the buckets, we have reduced the number of POIs by 15% in the “Unsure” bucket, when averaged across the 5 countries.
- NOTE: This is the third update to closed_bucket improvements in 2023. The 6 countries improved previously were the US and Western Europe (DE, FR, GB, IE, IT).
- Improved Lat-Long Accuracy for 4 Countries (AT, AU, BR, PL)
- We improved lat-longs by a process called Geocode Summarization, where the final latitude and longitude for a POI is selected based on analysis of the geocodes from 200+ data sources.
- To test the improvement in accuracy of predicted lat-longs, we sampled data with manually inspected lat-longs from multiple trusted sources. We found that,
- The median distance between the actual (ground truth) vs predicted (by geo summarizer model) lat-longs has reduced by 13% on average, when compared to previous lat-long. That is ~2.5m closer to ground truth on absolute terms.
- The 75th percentile has improved by 15% (~10m closer to ground truth) and the 90th percentile by 9% (24m closer), when averaged across the 4 countries.
- NOTE: This is the fourth update to lat-long accuracy improvements in 2023. The 13 countries improved previously were NAMER (US, CA), EMEA (CH, ES, FR, GB, IE, IT, NL, PT), APAC (JP, KR, SG).
- There was a bug that meant that category labels were plural, instead of singular. This was resolved and will be reflected in your next delivery.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,293,417
- US: 22,531,774
- Rest of World: 102,761,643
- POIs added in last 30 days: 184,941
- US: 55,320
- Rest of World: 129,621
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 172,694
- US: 78,082
- Rest of World: 94,612
- Validated in last 30 days: 2,364,983
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,018,609
- US: 1,479,476
- Rest of World: 1,539,133
- POIs added in last 30 days: 2,892
- US: 953
- Rest of World: 1,939
- Validated in last 30 days: 302,457
- US: 202,873
- Rest of World: 99,584
September 2023
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,923,469
- US: 22,554,333
- Rest of World: 103,369,136
- POIs added in last 30 days: 338,328
- US: 66,018
- Rest of World: 272,310
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 163,443
- US: 37,144
- Rest of World: 126,299
- Validated in last 30 days: 6,736,373
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,080,224
- US: 1,533,177
- Rest of World: 1,547,047
- POIs added in last 30 days: 20,952
- US: 14,802
- Rest of World: 6,150
- Validated in last 30 days: 521,223
- US: 246,371
- Rest of World: 274,852
August 2023
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,744,805
- US: 22,525,569
- Rest of World: 103,219,236
- POIs added in last 30 days: 187,925
- US: 33,563
- Rest of World: 154,362
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 98,832
- US: 25,089
- Rest of World: 73,743
- Validated in last 30 days: 4,051,708
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,083,377
- US: 1,541,966
- Rest of World: 1,541,411
- POIs added in last 30 days: 36,337
- US: 31,834
- Rest of World: 4,503
- Validated in last 30 days: 387,310
- US: 155,148
- Rest of World: 232,162
July 2023
What's New
- Added ~90 categories to the taxonomy: On June 1, the team added ~90 new categories to the taxonomy. As part of the update, we changed the labels to +150 categories in order to provide more granular information in the hierarchy to enhance search and analysis opportunities. As a whole, this initiative reinforces our goal to provide the most granular and accurate information to our customers, providing the most flexibility available to build the best products.
- Improved Open/Closed status for Western Europe: We refreshed Closed Bucket labels for 5 countries in Western Europe (FR, IT, DE, GB, IE) by recalibrating and retraining the Open/Closed Machine Learning models with larger quantity and better quality data.
- With this update, when we say a POI is VeryLikelyOpen or VeryLikelyClosed, we are 95% confident that it is Open or Closed respectively. This is a nearly 5% improvement compared to before. Also, we are 80% confident that a POI identified as LikelyOpen or VeryLikelyOpen is Open; and similarly, 80% confident that a POI identified as LikelyClosed or VeryLikelyClosed is Closed.
- In terms of distribution of POIs, there is a 40% reduction (on average across the 5 countries) in the number of POIs in the Unsure bucket. And, ~15% increase in the number of POIs in the Open buckets.
- Note: This is the second update to improving Closed Bucket this year. In the previous May update, we rolled out a refreshed Closed Bucket for the US.
- Improved lat-longs: Last month, we improved lat-longs for 6 countries in EU (FR, IT, IE, PT) and Asia (SG, KR) by a process called Geocode summarization, where a lat-long is picked for a POI from multiple data sources with a predictive algorithm. As we have mentioned before, to test the improvement in accuracy of predicted lat-longs, we sample data with manually inspected lat-longs from trusted sources. We found that,
- For four (FR, IE, PT, KR) out of the six countries, the median distance between the actual (ground truth) vs predicted (by geo summarizer model) lat-longs has reduced by 11% on average, when compared to old lat-long. That is ~2m closer to ground truth in absolute terms. For POIs in the 75th percentile, there is an improvement of 10%.
- SG is seeing a 7% improvement in the 75th and 90th percentile ranges; And, Italy is seeing an improvement of nearly 33% in the 90th percentile.
- Note: This is the third update to improve lat-longs. In the previous updates in H1 2023, we rolled out refreshed lat-longs for 7 countries (US, CA, CH, ES, GB, JP, NL).
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,654,272
- US: 22,516,510
- Rest of World: 103,137,762
- POIs added in last 30 days: 276,222
- US: 31,890
- Rest of World: 244,332
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 51,061
- US: 7,639
- Rest of World: 43,422
- Validated in last 30 days: 3,638,824
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,065,093
- US: 1,526,111
- Rest of World: 1,538,982
- POIs added in last 30 days: 5,392
- US: 2,401
- Rest of World: 2,991
- Validated in last 30 days: 823,177
- US: 666,930
- Rest of World: 156,247
June 2023
What's New
- Released ~90 new categories to API V3 and flat file on June 1. Over 150 category labels were updated as part of this release to include more granular information to help with filtering. New categories will begin appearing over time. See our Places Categories FAQs for more details.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,448,839
- US: 22,512,531
- Rest of World: 102,936,308
- POIs added in last 30 days: 723,415
- US: 125,073
- Rest of World: 598,342
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 1,225,573
- US: 82,873
- Rest of World: 1,142,700
- Validated in last 30 days: 4,056,048
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,081,883
- US: 1,544,098
- Rest of World: 1,537,785
- POIs added in last 30 days: 12,017
- US: 5,856
- Rest of World: 6,161
- Validated in last 30 days: 655,683
- US: 482,699
- Rest of World: 172,984
May 2023
What's New
- Closed Bucket Attribute: Last month saw an increase to its precision as it has improved across the board. As part of May’s release Closed Bucket will now be delivered as a Core attribute for all Places clients.
- For customers who do not receive Closed_Bucket today:
- Closed_Bucket will be delivered as a new core attribute. FSQ will not automatically filter any permanently closed places. Users can filter the closed_bucket depending on a use case that demands high reality and open POIs (high precision) vs. wide coverage and open POIs (high recall). The quintessential quality vs. quantity tradeoff.
- For customers who receive Closed_Bucket today:
- Users can continue to easily filter the closed_bucket depending on a use case that demands highly real and open POIs (high precision) vs. wide coverage and open POIs (high recall).
- For customers who do not receive Closed_Bucket today:
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,950,331
- US: 22,470,164
- Rest of World: 103,480,167
- POIs added in last 30 days: 243,663
- US: 11,532
- Rest of World: 232,131
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 1,010,684
- US: 332,705
- Rest of World: 677,979
- Validated in last 30 days: 4,003,469
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,094,780
- US: 1,547,441
- Rest of World: 1,547,339
- POIs added in last 30 days: 5,203
- US: 3,050
- Rest of World: 2,153
- Validated in last 30 days: 360,510
- US: 150,691
- Rest of World: 209,819
April 2023
What's New
- Improved Lat-Long for the US (GeoSummarizer Model)
We improve lat-longs by a process called Geocode Summarization, where the final latitude and longitude for a POI is selected based on analysis of the geocodes from multiple data sources.- To test the improvement in accuracy of predicted lat-longs, we sampled data with manually inspected lat-longs from multiple trusted sources. We found that,
- The median distance between the actual (ground truth) vs predicted (by geo summarizer model) lat-longs has reduced by 24%, when compared to old lat-long.
- Nearly 11% POIs (>5M) are expected to move to the correct building with this update.
- When we evaluated the change with this update for all POIs in FSQ data,
- 50% of POIs moved <10 meters
- 90% of POIs moved <50 meters
- As we strive for more accuracy, even though there might be a few POIs that are negatively impacted, the change is mostly within a 50m radius
- Note: This is the second update to improve lat-longs, and will reflect in the May 2023 delivery. In the Stage 1 rollout in Jan 2023, we improved the lat-longs for 6 countries (CA, CH, ES, GB, JP, NL).
- To test the improvement in accuracy of predicted lat-longs, we sampled data with manually inspected lat-longs from multiple trusted sources. We found that,
- Improved Closed scores for the US
Every month, we look for ways to improve the FSQ Reality and Closed Buckets to most accurately reflect our understanding of the real world for our customers. Due to the rapidly changing landscape of the world over the last few years, we have been hard at work to check what has changed and update our Closed Models to better reflect the “new normal”. The Closed buckets have been recalibrated with higher quality, larger quantity and more diverse data to predict better.- The Closed Bucket precision has improved across. When we say a place is VeryLikelyOpen, earlier the accuracy of positive predictions was 85%. With the improved model, the average precision rises to 93%, significantly improving the quality of the bucket.
- In terms of the distribution of POIs, more than 10% of the POIs moved from Open buckets to Closed Buckets. This was an expected outcome with many businesses closing post Covid.
- The “Unsure” bucket is now renamed to “Undecided” to more effectively communicate that FSQ today has only ~55% confidence that a place is Open/Closed but will keep looking for more signals to update this status.
- For ~15 customers who do not receive Closed_Bucket today:
- Closed_Bucket, which was previously part of Calculated Scores, is now a new core attribute. This is essentially the likelihood scores, p(closed), converted to buckets
- VeryLikelyClosed: (0.9, 1]
- LikelyClosed: (0.7, 0.9]
- Undecided: (0.3, 0.7]
- LikelyOpen: (0.1, 0.3]
- VeryLikelyOpen: [0, 0.1]
- Users can filter the closed_bucket column depending on a use case that demands highly real and open POIs (high precision) vs wide coverage (high recall). The quintessential quality vs quantity tradeoff.
- Closed_Bucket, which was previously part of Calculated Scores, is now a new core attribute. This is essentially the likelihood scores, p(closed), converted to buckets
- For rest who receive Closed_Bucket in Calculated Scores today:
- Users can easily filter the closed_bucket depending on a use case that demands highly real and open POIs (high precision) vs wide coverage (high recall).
- For ~15 customers who do not receive Closed_Bucket today:
- Note: The changes will reflect in the May 2023 delivery.
- The Closed Bucket precision has improved across. When we say a place is VeryLikelyOpen, earlier the accuracy of positive predictions was 85%. With the improved model, the average precision rises to 93%, significantly improving the quality of the bucket.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,716,732
- US: 22,791,234
- Rest of World: 103,925,498
- POIs added in last 30 days: 91,609
- US: 42,017
- Rest of World: 49,592
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 101,749
- US: 18,109
- Rest of World: 83,640
- Validated in last 30 days: 2,494,625
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,123,621
- US: 1,561,990
- Rest of World: 1,561,631
- POIs added in last 30 days: 26,067
- US: 24,303
- Rest of World: 1,764
- Validated in last 30 days: 379,218
- US: 276,615
- Rest of World: 102,603
March 2023
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,725,694
- US: 22,767,053
- Rest of World: 103,958,641
- POIs added in last 30 days: 54,619
- US: 5,632
- Rest of World: 48,987
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 21,899
- US: 3,444
- Rest of World: 18,455
- Validated in last 30 days: 3,821,059
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,110,089
- US: 1,548,799
- Rest of World: 1,561,290
- POIs added in last 30 days: 3,086
- US: 2,367
- Rest of World: 719
- Validated in last 30 days: 472,109
- US: 306,571
- Rest of World: 165,538
February 2023
What's New
- ~87K new POIs added in South Korea, which is about a 4% increase in coverage.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,691,618
- US: 22,763,442
- Rest of World: 103,928,176
- POIs added in last 30 days: 194,574
- US: 50,119
- Rest of World: 144,455
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 45,112
- US: 16,449
- Rest of World: 28,663
- Validated in last 30 days: 8,816,214
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,111,395
- US: 1,547,689
- Rest of World: 1,563,706
- POIs added in last 30 days: 9,637
- US: 6,912
- Rest of World: 2,725
- Validated in last 30 days: 194,574
- US: 50,119
- Rest of World: 144,455
January 2023
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,540,117
- US: 22,729,546
- Rest of World: 103,810,571
- POIs added in last 30 days: 486,906
- US: 122,626
- Rest of World: 364,280
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 350,089
- US: 55,504
- Rest of World: 294,585
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,109,044
- US: 1,547,419
- Rest of World: 1,561,625
- POIs added in last 30 days: 21,772
- US: 20,182
- Rest of World: 1,590
- Validated in last 30 days: 650,266
- US: 415,975
- Rest of World: 234,291
December 2022
What’s New
- Extended valid South Korean addresses to include 로. This resulted in an additional ~160k addresses added to the South Korean dataset.
- Added additional crawls in Mexico. This resulted in 452,829 POIs added (~12% improvement), and 46,479 lat/longs added (~1.2% improvement in fill rate).
- Increased chain coverage by 775 chains in the US.
- Improved accuracy of lat-longs in 6 countries to be rolled out in Jan 2023.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,401,883
- POIs added in last 30 days: 629,327
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 260,060
- Validated in last 30 days: 8,164,898
Chains
- Total POI count: 3,122,118
- POIs added in last 30 days: 111,570
- Validated in last 30 days: 530,593
Improved at-Long (GeoSummarizer Model)
For the 6 countries (CA, CH, ES, GB, JP, NL):
- To test the improvement in accuracy of predicted lat-longs, we sampled data with manually inspected lat-longs from multiple trusted sources. We found that on average across the 6 countries, the median distance between the actual (ground truth) vs predicted (by geo summarizer model) lat-longs has reduced by 18%, when compared to old lat-long. Canada and Japan saw a huge improvement at 27-28%.
- On average, when we evaluated the change with this update for all POIs in FSQ data:
- 60% of POIs moved <10 meters
- 94% of POIs moved <50 meters
- As we strive for more accuracy, even though there might be a few POIs that are negatively impacted, the change is mostly within a 50m radius
- Note:
- This is the first update on improving lat-longs. In the Stage 1 rollout for Jan 2023, we are targeting the 6 countries (CA, CH, ES, GB, JP, NL).
- In the Stage 2 rollout at the end of Q1 2023, we will aim to improve lat-longs in US, IN, SG, DE.
November 2022
What's New
- Fixed a bug that caused POIs generated by UGC to be removed if the lat/long conflicted with the associated country’s polygon. Since UGC data is flagged as high quality, the team created an exception so that POIs generated by UGC are not removed.
- Improved fill rates (0.5% Globally and 2% in the US) by making Place crawls more accepting of partially correct and/or partially available hours.
- Fixed a bug where the DMA attribute (US Only) was dropping leading and trailing 0’s. Resolving the bug resulted in adding values for 3.8m POIs (~8%).
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 126,032,616
- POIs added in last 30 days: 315,061
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 29,798
- Validated in last 30 days: 4,032,417
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 3,010,548
- POIs added in last 30 days: 6,166
- Validated in last 30 days: 353,673
October 2022
What's New
- Resolved a bug for POIs in South Korea that resulted in addresses being removed. By pushing the fix, more than 129k POIs in South Korea gained an address value and over 20k POIs had their address modified.
- Expanded EV charger coverage, which now includes +62k POIs globally, up from ~2.8k POIs at the start of the month.
- Made Places crawls more accommodating of partially correct and/or partially available hours of operation information earlier in Q3. This change generated a .5% improvement in fill rate, globally. In the US, this improved the fill rate by nearly 2%.
POI Changelog
- Total POI count: 125,754,117
- POIs added in last 30 days: 1,225,897
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 77,020
- Validated in last 30 days: 12,519,660
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 2,977,032
- POIs added in last 30 days: 35,173
- Validated in last 30 days: 909,612
September 2022
POI Changelog
Please note these numbers refer to the “quality cut” of the Places dataset. Numbers represent the last 30 days.
- Total POI count: 121,082,217
- POIs added in last 30 days: 606,203
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 86,080
- Validated in last 30 days: 11,026,200
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 2,946,389
- POIs added in last 30 days: 9,944
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 0
- Validated in last 30 days: 1,036,638
August 2022
POI Changelog
Please note these numbers refer to the “quality cut” of the Places dataset. Numbers represent the last 30 days.
- Total POI count: 120,921,154
- POIs added in last 30 days: 550,065
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 500,081
- Validated in last 30 days: 3,105,429
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 2,883,221
- POIs added in last 30 days: 7,624
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 0
- Validated in last 30 days: 326,141
July 2022
What's New
- +16,000 Electric Charging Station POIs were added, globally.
POI Changelog
Please note these numbers refer to the “quality cut” of the Places dataset. Numbers represent the last 30 days.
- Total POI count: 120,913,998
- POIs added in last 30 days: 2,081,970
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 673,291
- Validated in last 30 days: 8,315,935
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 2,846,370
- POIs added in last 30 days: 30,537
- POIs removed in last 30 days: 0
- Validated in last 30 days: 1,076,700
June 2022
What's New
- Census Block ID available and a core attribute for new customers.
- The Website attribute for ~300k POIs in Italy redirected to the POI’s page on a popular digital business directory. We have blacklisted that site, and removed it from the corresponding POIs. This impacts ~30% of all POIs in Italy.
- Removed +36,000 fake venues in Antarctica.
POI Changelog
Please note these numbers refer to the “quality cut” of the Places dataset. Numbers represent the last 30 days.
| Country | # of POIs Validated* |
|---|---|
| Global | 6,392,470 |
| United States | 43,147 |
| Australia | 476,077 |
| Brazil | 13,913 |
| Canada | 738,242 |
| France | 630,333 |
| Germany | 257,045 |
| Great Britain | 679,451 |
| Italy | 1,339,416 |
| Japan | 901,842 |
| Mexico | 171,275 |
| Singapore | 2,237 |
| Spain | 469,463 |
Chains Changelog
- Total POI count: 2,771,513
- POIs added in last 30 days: N/A
- Validated in last 30 days: 305,299
Updated 5 days ago