Release Notes - FSQ OS Places

November 2025

Since previous release on 10/14

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 105,666,452
• Total Added: 237,497
• Total Updated (Total Refreshed or Total Edited): 6,695,158
• Total Removed: 21,377
• Total Merged: 10,037
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,534,562

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 3,637,337
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 3,129,545

What's New

• Transaction Data For New Place Discovery
  One of the most critical challenges in the POI world is the continuous identification of new places. While our Placemakers provide a significant edge in discovering and adding new places through on-the-ground knowledge, we recognized the need for an additional, scalable data source that could complement human intelligence. For over a year, our data science teams have been perfecting our understanding of transaction data—the notoriously fuzzy, inconsistent merchant names and location information that appear on payment records. We've now developed a new model that allows us to identify real-world places with a high degree of precision from these fuzzy transaction strings.
  
  This release marks our first integration of transaction intelligence directly into FSQ OS Places, adding nearly 72,000 new places from transaction-derived sources from a limited experiment. We will be ramping up this number significantly in the next release, as we expand the number of transactions we put through this pipeline. Beyond place discovery, we're actively developing integrations to enhance existing place data: using transaction patterns to improve veracity ratings, infer operational hours and open/closed status.
  
  
• Overture Places As A New Source
  In September 2024, the Overture Maps Foundation introduced a critical enhancement to their places dataset: source attribution. This addition identifies which upstream data sources were conflated to create each Overture place record. This development created a unique opportunity for FSQ OS Places to ingest Overture data without duplicating sources already in our dataset.
  
  We conducted a comprehensive experiment ingesting around 2 million Overture POIs in the United Kingdom through our Places Engine. We added ~10,000 new places from Overture sources not previously in FSQ OS Places and matched ~700,000 existing places with high confidence. The integration generated 700,000+ suggested edits from attribute mismatches. Of these, we accepted 119,000 edits, rejected 21,000, and have 244,000 pending further review. An additional 500,000 places are under verification for quality concerns or to confirm they meet our POI criteria (excluding services without physical locations).
  
  All contributions sourced from Overture are fully traceable in our Placemaker tools. Community members can review Overture sourced additions, accept/reject suggested changes and provide their own corrections. Follow the link here to view contributions from Overture Maps Foundation. We will publish a detailed blog post on our end-to-end process of ingestion soon.
  
  
• GeoSummarizer Expansion
  Geosummarizer is a machine learning model that solves the micro-location challenge by synthesizing conflicting or noisy location data from multiple sources into a single, definitive coordinate that accurately represents where a place physically exists. The model operates through a five-step workflow detailed in our blog post here. Our pilot in Germany reduced the average geocode error from 14m to 9m, a 35% improvement in accuracy. In this release, we deployed our Geosummarizer Model in France, Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain resulting in 639,445 POI receiving more accurate latitude and longitude values.
  
  
• More Avenues for Business Owners & Placemakers
  We're democratizing contribution to FSQ OS Places by meeting contributors where they are—whether they're business owners protecting their brand, mobile users spotting outdated information, or experienced Placemakers curating their communities:
  
  1. Business Owner Portal: We launched business.foursquare.com to enable business owners to claim their listings in the Foursquare dataset and keep them up-to-date. This direct channel ensures businesses can manage their presence in FSQ OS Places without intermediaries.
  2. Enhanced Placemaker Tools: We've added photo flagging capabilities to our Placemaker Tools, enabling our community to identify and report inappropriate, outdated, or low-quality imagery attached to places—maintaining visual quality standards at scale.
  3. Superlocal Integration: Following our acquisition earlier this summer, the Superlocal app is now fully integrated with FSQ Places. Users can add new places and edit existing information from their mobile device, transforming casual observations into structured place data.

These investments reflect our commitment to building an open places dataset that anyone can improve, through whatever channel works best for them.

October 2025

Since previous release on 09/09

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 105,450,332
• Total Added: 168,314
• Total Updated (Total Refreshed or Total Edited): 5,636,314
• Total Removed: 10,925
• Total Merged: 7,716
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,529,617

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 2,359,256
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 2,059,501

What's New

• We've deprecated the public S3 bucket and replaced it with an Iceberg catalog accessible via our new Places Portal. By following this link, you can sign up to create an account, find datasets and access information, and explore user guides.
  • More information about this change can be found here: https://medium.com/@foursquare/evolving-fsq-os-places-fa7a3f5197cd
  • The latest PM Tiles will still be available at:
    s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/vector-tiles/latest/fsq-os-places.pmtiles
  • Monthly releases will still be available on Snowflake and Hugging Face
  • Previous Release datasets will be available in the public S3 bucket for a period of time.
• We deployed our updated Geosummarizer Model in Austria resulting in 221,216 POI receiving more accurate latitude and longitude values
• Postcode in the US. We corrected the postcode for 151,422 POI in the US that were previously NULL.
• Locality in the US. We corrected the locality for 144,771 POI in the US that were previously NULL.
• Region standardization in Mexico. We corrected the region attribute values for 308,026 POI to use the standard Mexican name for states.

September 2025

Since previous release on 08/07

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 105,292,526
• Total Added: 160,930
• Total Updated (Total Refreshed or Total Edited): 7,280,863
• Total Removed: 12,124
• Total Merged: 6,966
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,439,205

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 4,288,562
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 930,508

What's New

• Expanded our Profanity Model to cover Japanese language, resulting in 12,000 places flagged for for further corroboration.

August 2025

Since previous release on 07/08

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 105,143,720
• Total Added: 135,839
• Total Updated (Total Refreshed or Total Edited): 7,248,878
• Total Removed: 12,738
• Total Merged: 5,827
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,458,544

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 3,775,509
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 1,762,831

What's New

• We've introduced a new supplemental delta file that will accompany each POI dataset release going forward. This file captures the identifiers of places that have changed—including additions, updates, removals, and merges—since the previous release, enabling more efficient and incremental data processing. They are located at s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/dt=2025-08-07/deltas/parquet/
  This new supplemental file does not introduce a new file format, but provides a distinct schema tailored to support incremental ingestion, faster syncs, and precise change tracking in your downstream systems.
  
  
  Delta File Schema:
  fsq_place_id – Unique identifier for the place
  action – Type of change:
  ---add – New place added
  ---update – Existing place modified
  ---remove – Existing place removed
  ---merge – Place has been merged into another
  redirect – For merge actions, this field indicates the fsq_place_id of the new, surviving record. Null for other actions.
  
  
  To apply updates correctly, we recommend processing records in the following order: add → update → merge → remove.
• Expanded our Closed Model to these regions and countries:
  • Asia: China, Japan, Korea
  • LATM-- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela
  • Europe -- Belgium, Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Russia, Turkey
• Expanded our Profanity Model to cover Portuguese and Turkish languages

July 2025

Since previous release on 06/10

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 105,020,619
• Total Created: 110,223
• Total Refreshed: 5,840,267
• Total Edited: 1,207,055
• Total Closed: 172,806
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,231,526

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 3,268,382
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 1,831,360

What's New

• We expanded the coverage of our improved Closed Model, by deploying it in 27 additional countries. This resulted in 52,000 closures predominantly across Europe and South East Asia.
• We deployed our updated Geosummarizer Model in Australia, United Kingdom, and Germany resulting in 1.7 million POI receiving more accurate latitude and longitude values.
• We corrected an outdated telephone format for POI in Colombia, with 138,971 POI receiving an updated formal country code and area code.
• We introduced a new attribute veracity_rating in our Premium dataset. This is a 1 to 5 star quality rating indicating how complete, current, and reliable the location's information is, providing context on how strong our data signals are for this place.
  5 = Highly reliable and complete information, regularly updated from trusted sources and real user activity.
  4 = Very good information verified from reliable sources with some user engagement.
  3 = Good essential information from multiple sources that's generally current but less frequently updated
  2 = Basic information available but some details may be missing or outdated.
  1 = Limited information from few sources that may not have been updated recently.

June 2025

Since previous release on 05/09

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,923,153
• Total Created: 123,461
• Total Refreshed: 5,886,054
• Total Edited: 1,381,387
• Total Closed: 83,346
• Total Places w/ Unresolved Flags: 1,266,275 (new metric to accompany new attribute unresolved_flags)

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 3,440,707
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 2,469,035

What's New

• A new attribute unresolved_flags is available. This is a set of quality issue flags reported by Placemakers, human or agent, that require further corroboration. Each flag marks a suspected problem that has not yet been resolved. The values can be one or more of the following:

  • closed – the venue is believed to be permanently closed
  • duplicate – the venue is a duplicate of another record
  • delete – the venue should be removed entirely
  • privatevenue – the venue is private and should not be publicly listed
  • inappropriate – the content violates policy or is otherwise unsuitable
  • doesnt_exist – the venue is thought not to exist at the specified location

  Customers can use this field to mitigate risk—by filtering out or down-ranking places with unresolved flags to avoid relying on potentially inaccurate data—while also acting as data stewards by leveraging Placemaker tools to help Foursquare confirm or clear the flagged issues and continuously improve the dataset.

• Improved Closed model precision and coverage. We improved our Closed Model with more accurate annotations, time-sensitive signals, and hyperparameter tuning. We also expanded the coverage to other English dominant countries including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. The model flagged 90,639 places as potentially closed, with 14,530 resolved. The remaining unresolved cases are captured in the new unresolved_flags attribute.

• Improved Profanity model coverage. We have expanded the coverage of our Profanity Model to include the following languages: Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian. The model proposed 33,148 inappropriate flags and led to the deletion of 11,308 places.

• Region standardization in Australia. We corrected the region attribute values for 26,721 POI to use the standard abbreviation for states and territories.

• Region standardization in Germany. We corrected the region attribute values for 214,315 POI to use the standard German name for states.

May 2025

Since previous release on 04/08

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,827,694
• Total Created: 145,750
• Total Refreshed: 6,325,741 (previously reported as Total Updated)
• Total Edited: 2,561,320 (new metric, compared to 514,314 total edits in previous release cycle)
• Total Closed: 190,519

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 4,516,189
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 3,485,361

What's New

• In this release, we have operationalized 3 new models: Profanity Detection, Open/Closed Detection and GeoSummarization (which uses spatial signals to identify the correct lat/lng from a list of candidates). Each of these models are encapsulated as Agents in our system either proposing new edits to places or confirming existing edits. This is yet another example of how we ensure model outputs to be further corroborated by the human-in-the-loop workflows. This also sets the stage for us to provide more quality levers for our customers in the next release.
• Region standardization in Australia. We corrected the region attribute values for 172,355 POI to use the standard abbreviation for states and territories.
• Correction of Stacked POI. We assessed stacked POI’s (groups of POI sharing lat/lon values) through a contextual analysis based on category, foot traffic patterns, and address validity. We corrected the locations of the top 15% of highest quality POI within stacks that were identified as real and in the wrong location. We deleted the bottom 15% of lowest quality POI within stacks that were identified as not real.
  • Geo-Coordinate Changes: 31,240
  • Deletions: 32,347
• We have renamed the Changelog metric Total Updated to Total Refreshed to match the column name date_refreshed in the OS Places schema. This is the total POI that have either received edits or other engagement signals such as user check-ins, photos and tips.
• We have added a new Changelog metric Total Edited. This is the total number of Places within the dataset that received a change to an attribute. It includes any approved edits from first party users, our automated ingestion system, or our ML models.

April 2025

Since previous release on 03/06

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,747,660
• Total Created: 103,375
• Total Updated: 4,090,801
• Total Closed: 55,582

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 1,425,450
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 927,602

What's New

• We tested a new workflow to make targeted improvements to our Places dataset with an experiment on a sample of 10k places in the Montreal region resulting in 1.5k new places added and 5.8k places updated, setting us up for more aggressive updates to our dataset in the forthcoming releases.
• We standardized the region attribute of 82,601 POI in Canada to the two-letter province abbreviation.
• We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 1,346 POI globally that did not match the intersecting country.

March 2025

Since previous release on 02/06

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,666,133
• Total Created: 74,475
• Total Updated: 3,481,713
• Total Closed: 32,174

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 1,380,830
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 655,755

What's New

• We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 257,500 POI that had previous latitude, longitude values of NULL.
• We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 25,754 POI in the US where the region values did not match their previous latitude and longitude placement.
• We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 2,777 POI in Canada where the region values did not match their previous latitude and longitude placement.
• We corrected the country code for 5,921 POI globally that had previously been marked NULL.

February 2025

Since previous release on 01/10

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,635,092
• Total Created: 76,117
• Total Updated: 3,306,527
• Total Closed: 47,621

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 2,169,441
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 601,218

What's New

• A new format PMTiles is available on S3:
  • The latest version of OS Places will be available as vector tiles in PMTile format for efficient use in smart mapping and visualization applications.
  • S3 location: s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/vector-tiles/latest/
  • Please preview the tiles using kepler.gl 3.1 map viewer
    • Click on 'Tileset' Tab in the Add Data To Map dialog.
    • Add the PMTiles URL to the 'Tileset URL' text box: https://fsq-os-places-us-east-1.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/release/vector-tiles/latest/fsq-os-places.pmtiles
    • Click on 'Add Tileset' to start exploring!
• The geoparquet release in S3 implements a more efficient sort based on geocoordinate partitioning. The result is more efficient spatial queries.
• We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 44,756 POI located in oceans by geocoding POI with full address, country codes and non-marine related categories.
• We removed 15,657 POI in the US with profanity in the name attribute. We used a two-pass approach: first identified problematic POIs through string matching against a profanity lexicon and NLI-based probability scoring, then evaluated flagged POIs for legitimacy by analyzing historical foot traffic patterns, address validity, and contact information completeness, with entries failing multiple criteria marked for removal.
• We removed 2,911 POI with null country code, completely null address parts and an absence of historical foot traffic.

January 2025

Since previous release on 12/04

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,588,312
• Total Created: 120,720
• Total Updated: 4,243,568
• Total Closed: 64,950

Suggested Edits Volume

• Suggested Edits Created Since Last Release: 4,527,740
• Suggested Edits Resolved Since Last Release: 4,204,336

What’s New

• A new column placemaker_url has been added.
  • This attribute contains a link to the POI’s review page in the PlaceMaker Tools application.
  • Users can suggest edits to correct data quality issues or review pending edits.
  • Example: https://foursquare.com/placemakers/review-place/5a187743ccad6b307315e6fe
  • See documentation for more information.
• We filled 1,768,290 POI postcode values using contextual address mapping.
• We removed 27,584 POI that were located in oceans by isolating POI with missing address and a lack of first party data signals.
• We corrected 238 POI that were located in oceans with inverted latitude and longitude values.
• We corrected 33,321 POI in the US where region values did not match their latitude and longitude placement.
• The date_refreshed attribute indicates when we last received trustworthy confirmation about a place's details, either through trusted data sources or human interaction such as user edits and rich content submissions.
  • We've improved how we track this timestamp by updating it only when we receive external validation - whether from trusted sources, Swarm users contributing content, or Placemaker edits.
  • We no longer update this timestamp for automated system changes, such as standardization updates or internal algorithm adjustments. As a result of this one-time adjustment, many places show older date_refreshed values compared to the previous release.

December 2024

Since previous release on 11/19

POI Data Changelog

• Total POI: 104,529,230
• Total Created: 21,889
• Total Refreshed: 200,561
• Total Closed: 27,691

What’s New

• New file formats available in the public S3 bucket
  • Geoparquet format with Zstandard compression is now available with supported geometry columns
    s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/dt=2024-12-03/places/parquet
• An offering is now available on HuggingFace
• An offering is now available on Snowflake