The Ultimate Guide to SafeGraph’s Geocode Data

In today’s dynamic world, accurate and timely geocoding data is more important than ever. According to Gartner, poor data quality costs organizations nearly $13 million per year. Businesses, organizations, and research institutions rely on precise location data to drive successful operations across use cases —from logistics and navigation to marketing and spatial analysis. This guide will explore what geocoding is, its importance, a comparison between SafeGraph’s geocoding, Google, and OpenStreetMap (OSM), and the wide-ranging applications of geocoded data.

What is Geocoding?

Geocoding is the process of transforming descriptions of locations, such as addresses or place names, into geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude). In simple terms, this explains what geocode means. This process is fundamental to numerous applications, enabling precise mapping, spatial analysis, and more. Some of the benefits include:

Enhanced Navigation

Accurate geocoding ensures navigation systems provide precise directions, critical for logistics, ride-sharing apps, and personal navigation devices. Geocoding data enables these systems to translate an address into a pinpoint location on a map, ensuring users arrive at the exact destination without ambiguity.

Improved Customer Experience

Businesses use geocoded location services such as Placekey to guarantee accurate deliveries and help customers find store locations effortlessly, enhancing overall satisfaction. By converting addresses into geographic coordinates accurately through reliable geocoding, companies can ensure their logistics operations run smoothly, reducing delivery errors and improving customer service.

Data Analysis and Visualization

Geocoding facilitates effective analysis and visualization of spatial data, revealing geographic patterns and trends that inform strategic decision-making. It allows businesses to overlay address-based data on maps, making it easier to spot trends and make data-driven decisions using geocoded data.

Comparing SafeGraph’s Geocoding vs. OSM & Google

Whether building a consumer-facing application or developing an internal analytics tool, product managers and engineers rely on accurate geocoding as an essential component. We conducted an analysis comparing SafeGraph’s geocoding data to OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google in the Little Rock area to assess precision and reliability.

SafeGraph Data:

• Precision: The average distance between SafeGraph geocodes and actual locations is very small, with an average deviation of just 2.17 meters.
• Consistency Across Locations: Most SafeGraph geocoded points are highly accurate, ensuring that POIs are correctly placed.

OSM & Google Data:

Variable Precision: While the average distance between OSM geocodes and actual locations is also 2.17 meters, there are notable outliers:

• Schlotzsky’s: 15 meters difference

• Subway located in a Walmart Supercenter – OSM and Google pin situated on opposite end where a nail salon is located

These outliers indicate that some OSM and Google geocoding data could return neighboring buildings or businesses, leading to potential inaccuracies in real-world applications.

How SafeGraph Curates Geocodes and POIs

SafeGraph’s geocoding and POI data are meticulously curated to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information at scale.

Monthly Refreshes

Our Places dataset is updated every month, capturing the dynamic nature of the physical world and ensuring you always have the most current geocoded data.

Data Validation

SafeGraph employs rigorous data validation methods to maintain high data quality:

• Web Crawling: Seamlessly gathering public web data from thousands of sources.
• Machine Learning Models: Cross-referencing, validating, and classifying POIs at scale during the geocoding process.
• Human Validation: Developing ground truth data to ensure the highest precision and recall.

Once all of the data is ingested, we go through a rigorous de-duping and merging process to make sure the dataset is clean and ready for use as reliable geocoding data.

Choosing the Right Geocoding Provider

Accurate geocoding is essential for a wide range of business applications, including marketing, logistics, urban planning, navigation, and retail analysis. High-quality geocoded data ensures precise mapping, efficient routing, effective spatial analysis, and more, which are critical for making informed decisions and optimizing operations. While there are various providers offering geocoding data, evaluating factors such as accuracy, coverage, and data updates can help businesses choose the data provider that best meets their needs and supports their specific use cases.

Additional Resources

Placekey’s Geocoding Service

Placekey recently released a Geocoder that converts POIs and addresses into specific location coordinates (latitude and longitude). This helps clarify what is geocoding in practice. As discussed in this blog, accurate coordinates are essential for maintaining precise address records, performing mapping, logistics, and business analysis. The Placekey Geocoder offers rooftop accuracy, ensuring the highest level of precision for your geocoding needs. Geocodes can be easily obtained by making a simple API request.

The Placekey Geocoder has a generous free tier of 10,000 per day and allows you to store the geocoded results received forever.

SafeGraph Places Data

SafeGraph Places is a comprehensive dataset composed of high-quality POIs, leveraged by thousands of organizations globally who trust the data as their primary source of truth. It includes geospatial attributes such as address strings, geographic coordinates, brand affiliations, open and close dates, and NAICS or category codes that support accurate geocoding data workflows.