Data Points

It's very common as the POI Product Manager to get questions regarding the existence of a particular business at any given location.  Often, I hear questions along the lines of, "why does it take so long for a business to appear within the database?"

The short answer is, we take the extra steps to cleanse and curate our data to provide the best possible information about a given location.  How do we do that?

Our curation process is multi-layered.  We have set an expectation of producing only information that we feel is trusted and validated.  Therefore, we run all of our data feeds through a vigorous process of cleansing, de-duplication, and quality assurance before they are added to the final database.  So what does that mean?

Our data is fed from over 3000 unique locations, many of which are authoritative sources of data.  Public Registries, telephone directories, and Local Mercantile Registries are just a few of the sources of data used to gather information about a location.   All of which gets collected and standardized into a central database.  Until we have enough sources of data in agreement on the information of a given location, it is held, but not published.  This is very important, as it is a built-in confidence of the validity of our data.  Many other sources of POI data on the market will not cleanse the data.  Instead, they will publish all information found, and leave it to the user to clean.

While this process may slow a particular point from updating, it adds confidence and cleanliness to the finalized product.

It's very common as the POI Product Manager to get questions regarding the existence of a particular business at any given location.  Often, I hear questions along the lines of, "why does it take so long for a business to appear within the database?"

The short answer is, we take the extra steps to cleanse and curate our data to provide the best possible information about a given location.  How do we do that?

Our curation process is multi-layered.  We have set an expectation of producing only information that we feel is trusted and validated.  Therefore, we run all of our data feeds through a vigorous process of cleansing, de-duplication, and quality assurance before they are added to the final database.  So what does that mean?

Our data is fed from over 3000 unique locations, many of which are authoritative sources of data.  Public Registries, telephone directories, and Local Mercantile Registries are just a few of the sources of data used to gather information about a location.   All of which gets collected and standardized into a central database.  Until we have enough sources of data in agreement on the information of a given location, it is held, but not published.  This is very important, as it is a built-in confidence of the validity of our data.  Many other sources of POI data on the market will not cleanse the data.  Instead, they will publish all information found, and leave it to the user to clean.

While this process may slow a particular point from updating, it adds confidence and cleanliness to the finalized product.