FAQs - SafeGraph

Does SafeGraph Places contain mobility data?

No. SafeGraph focuses exclusively on POI and transaction data. Advan Research now provides what was formerly SafeGraph mobility data.

Has SafeGraph stopped producing this data or do they make this data available through Advan?

SafeGraph no longer produces Patterns. Advan Research produces their own version of it.

Does Global Places & Geometry data have a longitudinal component?

The Places and Geometry data are not longitudinal datasets. The data goes through a full refresh each month, so the data you’re seeing is a snapshot of POI information as of “today.” Because of the size of this overall dataset, it is delivered as multiple files of the same size, but the files are random.

Safegraph Spend data has some missing entries for RAW_TOTAL_SPEND for a few months in 2023 for particular PLACEKEYS. Does that mean the value of RAW_TOTAL_SPEND is 0 for that month or that no information is available for that PLACEKEY in that month?

You can review this privacy statement from SafeGraph. They don’t report on Spend if there was only one observation. So you can’t rule out that there was a transaction but it wasn’t reported. For the same reason, they also won’t ever report 0 as the spend, it will just remain blank.

How can I map geographic data on Dewey, like Places, to Census Block Group, Census Tract, CBSA, etc.

Here is a sample Python code for mapping Dewey Data to Census Block Group, Census Tract, CBSA, etc.

In the SafeGraph Spend Panel, some states show sudden increases in total number, which we can attribute to the addition of data sources. However, in other states, nearly half of the original data is lost. Is there a reason why the data sources disappear in certain states?

This panel is made up from data from a variety of financial institutions. It’s common and expected for institutions to be introduced and dropped from the panel over time. Depending on the adoption of those institutions regionally, it may impact various geographies differently over time.

The opened_on and closed_on variables have a low fill rate. Why is that?

You can read up on open/closed on logic from SafeGraph here. This is a column they’ve only started tracking in the past few years. In theory, it should cover closures in the past few years. Based on how they generate their data at scale, some brands are going to be easier to track than others, some will be delayed a few months. They may eventually backfill data once they find a better resource.