Glossary

A

• Address Validation Read More >
  Address validation checks whether an address is real, correctly formatted, complete, and recognized as a deliverable address, not just whether it is spelled correctly.
• Alternative Data Read More >
  Not every business trend appears in an earnings report. Store visits, foot traffic, satellite imagery, and online activity can provide valuable clues about what is happening before traditional data catches up.
• Anonymization Read More >
  Imagine taking the name tag off a person while keeping everything else that makes the record useful. You can still learn from the information, but you cannot tell who it belongs to.
• Artificial Intelligence Read More >
  AI is when computers perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as learning, recognizing patterns, understanding language, or making decisions.

B

• Batch Geocoding Read More >
  Batch geocoding lets you turn hundreds or thousands of addresses into coordinates in one go, instead of doing them one at a time.
• Beacon Advertising Read More >
  Beacon advertising uses Bluetooth signals from physical beacons to trigger targeted messages, offers, or other promotional content on nearby customers' mobile devices.
• Beacon Technology Read More >
  A beacon is a tiny device that constantly broadcasts a signal, like a lighthouse, so nearby phones and apps know it's there.
• Building Footprint Read More >
  Think of a building footprint as tracing around a building’s base while looking at it from above.
• Business Intelligence Read More >
  Business intelligence is like a shopkeeper checking the ledger to see what sells, what does not, and what needs attention. A business does the same thing with its data, using information about sales, operations, customers, and performance to understand what is happening and decide what to do next.

C

• Catchment Area Analysis Read More >
  Think of a catchment area as the places a business can realistically draw customers from. Catchment area analysis maps those places to understand how far a location reaches and who falls within its potential customer base.
• Category Tags Read More >
  Category tags are extra descriptive labels for a place, so instead of just knowing it's a "restaurant," you know it's specifically a pizza place.
• City Centroid Read More >
  A city centroid is the single point that marks the middle of a city on a map, the way you might stick a pin in the center of town to stand for the whole place.
• Contextual Targeting Read More >
  Contextual targeting is an ad reading the room, a running shoe ad shows up on a marathon article because of what's on the page, not because it knows anything about you.

D

• Differential Privacy Read More >
  Differential privacy adds a small amount of random change in data so you can see useful patterns in the data without seeing information about any one person.

E

• ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) Read More >
  ETL is the process of pulling data from wherever it lives, cleaning it up, and loading it somewhere useful, so it can be used for analysis and decision-making.

G

• Geolocation Read More >
  Geolocation is how a device figures out where it is in the world, like when your phone shows your location as a blue dot on a map.
• Geospatial Data Read More >
  Geospatial data is any piece of information that's tied to a specific spot on Earth, basically anything that can answer the question "where."
• Geospatial Intelligence Read More >
  If geospatial data is the raw ingredients, geospatial intelligence is the finished dish, the actual insight you get once someone’s analyzed that data to answer a real question.
• Geotagging Read More >
  Geotagging is adding a location stamp to something, like a photo or a post, so it carries a record of where it was created.
• Global Positioning System (GPS) Read More >
  GPS is what puts the blue dot on your map. Satellites way up in space are constantly telling your phone exactly where it's standing.

H

• Human-Verified Data Read More >
  Human-Verified Data is information that has been checked by an actual person, not just generated and left as-is by an algorithm.

L

• Lat/Long (Latitude/Longitude) Read More >
  Latitude and longitude are two numbers that pinpoint a location on Earth, like a global address system made of coordinates instead of street names.

M

• Machine Learning Read More >
  Machine learning is a way of teaching computers to find patterns in data and make predictions without a person writing step-by-step rules for every situation.

N

• NAICS Code Read More >
  A NAICS code is a standardized number used to classify what kind of business a place is, much like a category label for an industry.

P

• Point of Interest (POI) Read More >
  All POIs are places, but not all places are POIs, a private home doesn't count, a coffee shop does.
• Polygon Data Read More >
  A polygon is a place’s footprint. It shows the space within its real boundaries.
• Polygon Geofences Read More >
  A circular geofence is like tracing a shape with a compass, round no matter what's actually there. A polygon geofence is like tracing it with a pen, following the real edges of the building.

R

• Raster Data Read More >
  Raster data represents geographic information as a grid of tiny cells, each storing a value for a specific location.
• Raster Tile Data Read More >
  Imagine a giant poster map cut into thousands of small squares. Your screen only shows the few squares you're looking at, and it swaps in new ones as you move around. That's raster tile data: one big picture, sliced up so maps load quickly.
• Reverse Geocoding Read More >
  Reverse geocoding turns a dot on a map into a place you can name. It is like dropping a pin on your phone and having the map tell you "you are at 12 Main Street."

S

• Shapefile Read More >
  A shapefile is a widely used file format for storing map shapes, such as building outlines, roads, or property boundaries, so GIS and mapping software can read and display them.
• Spatial Join Read More >
  A spatial join matches two lists by where things are, not by a shared name or ID. It is like laying a sheet of pins over a neighborhood map to see which neighborhood each pin lands in.

T

• Trade Area Analysis Read More >
  Trade area analysis studies where a business's customers come from and how far they travel to reach it, helping businesses understand their real geographic customer base.

V

• Vector Data Read More >
  Vector data draws the world with points, lines, and shapes, the same way you'd sketch a map by hand: a dot for a store, a line for a road, and an outline for a building.

W

• Well-Known Text (WKT) Read More >
  WKT is a way of writing a geographic shape, such as a building outline or property boundary, as plain text that both people and computers can read.