A “point of interest” refers to any building, monument, landmark, or physical space – other than a private residence – that people may want to visit. So, as you can imagine, there are a lot of them on planet Earth.

But more important than knowing how many there are is how much people know about them. What country, region, and city do they belong to? Could someone find them using a street address? Is there a brand associated with a specific place? Could someone contact the managers by mail or phone?

What we mean to say by this is that there’s a lot of information that can be associated with any point of interest beyond just its name. So that begs the question: how complete is the POI data you’re relying on for your use case? This visualization gives you a snapshot of how much data SafeGraph has on POIs around the world.

About this POI data visualization

SafeGraph has data on places around the globe, but no two countries are alike, so their statistics will always vary. This visualization gives a sense of the relative coverage for any given country.

We’ve found that pure counts don’t tell the full story. Just because a particular country has more POI than another doesn’t mean the coverage is necessarily “better” or more complete. So we’ve developed a tiering system that takes more variables into account, like the types of POIs or the coverage relative to population density. 

Our tiers are as follows:

• Tier 1: Our highest level of coverage. These countries have seen significant investment and have benefited from customer feedback over time. Expect extensive coverage of major brands, local brands, non-branded places and more bespoke categories as well.    ‍

• Tier 2: These countries have broad coverage due to recent investment. This includes both branded and non-branded POI, but some local brands may be missing. Some of the more niche categories may be limited as well (like hospitals, schools, parks, etc).

• Tier 3: These countries have some coverage but it won’t be across all categories. Branded POI are likely from major brands and general POI coverage will mostly be consumer oriented categories (like restaurants, retail stores, etc.).‍

• Tier 4: Our lowest level of coverage. These countries have some POIs but they haven’t been a direct focus. The POIs are likely due to our coverage of global brands. 

If you move your cursor over a country, you’ll see the Tier we’ve assigned it as well as some of the statistics related to the Tier. While this visualization is designed to convey our global Places coverage, note that the “%_pois_with_geometry” statistic shows how many of our POIs have an associated Geometry in a given country as well. To find out more about all of the attributes we provide, see the documentation for SafeGraph Places.

If you want to get the precise details on POIs in countries around the world, you need SafeGraph Places. Get a free sample here.

The extent of SafeGraph Places statistics and POI data by country

As demonstrated by this visualization, SafeGraph has data on points of interest for over 200 countries worldwide, for millions of individual POIs.

We understand that things are constantly changing around the world. We also recognize that using stale data can cause very erroneous decisions, because you risk missing critical new details that have emerged. That’s why SafeGraph updates its Places dataset at least once every month, to keep our data fresh and accurate. That way, organizations that use it can be confident they’re making decisions based on current information.

Why is it important to have complete POI data?

Having more complete and accurate data on POIs is important because this data is used for a variety of important purposes. As a basic example, people looking to navigate new places want to know what makes a point of interest… well, interesting. Where is it? What’s going on there? When is it popular? And how can someone get more information about the place? These are all fundamental questions that POI data should be able to answer.

The importance goes beyond that, though. For governments, knowing precisely where POIs are located within their jurisdiction and what their functions are is essential for optimally planning further urban development. Similarly, companies (and investors, by extension) can look at the type and number of businesses in an area to determine where a store should be located to have the best chance of success, or even whether the store would succeed at all. And insurers can assess risk for POIs based on their attributes, including their proximity to other POIs and the risk levels of those POIs.

How to get this data from SafeGraph

SafeGraph Places is our flagship dataset, providing detailed information on millions of POIs globally. Thousands of distinct brands are attributed to those POIs and the dataset is refreshed monthly to ensure it remains reliable.

Visit our site if you’re looking to curate information on POIs in a particular area.

Related data visualizations

SafeGraph Places can reveal a lot more about certain types of POIs, including how they’re distributed throughout a country or even the entire world. Check these visualizations out to see what we mean:

• Beijing 2022 Olympics Map – Locations and information regarding points of interest in China, with a particular focus on POIs related to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
• Global QSR Market Footprints – Global point of interest locations, data, and stats from October 2021 for the top five fast food chains in the world: Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut.
• UK Brand Distribution – Locations, data, and stats regarding popular brands in the UK from a sample set of business categories: cafes (Costa Coffee), supermarkets (Argos, Lidl), department stores (M&S), and fast food chains (Subway).

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