Neighborhood boundaries enable consumers to conduct meaningful searches for homes and apartments. They help people more easily find products and services through search and local search engines. They allow for precise messaging in geoadvertising, mobile marketing, social media and direct marketing use cases.
But to achieve all this, neighborhood boundaries must be accurate, current and complete.
Maponics strives to offer the highest quality Neighborhood Boundaries product on the market. Here are a few of our quality control measures.
We Carefully Source Our Data
Our Data Acquisition (DA) department continually identifies new and relevant sources of neighborhood data, which our Production team then uses to verify current boundaries or build out new ones. Our Neighborhood Boundaries are updated quarterly, and customers see the latest data reflected in the next quarterly release.
Below is a local planning map from Bothell, Washington, which our Production team used to build neighborhood boundaries in the Seattle suburb:
Clik here to view.
The map on the left is from the local planning commission in Bothell, WA. Maponics neighborhood boundaries on the right are modeled on this authoritative source. (Click to enlarge.)
Jeff Howe, Quality Manager at Maponics, explains:
“What sets us apart in terms of quality? Our effort is spent on finding out what the actual neighborhood boundary is, then making our data match that. We then go back to review the area to make sure that it’s up to date.”
We Align Boundaries to Physical Features
Because neighborhood divisions reflect on-the-ground reality, we focus on aligning boundaries with physical features. We do not want to represent neighborhood boundaries as arbitrary lines that run through the trees or over houses.
Clik here to view.
Red lines signify current Maponics boundaries for this neighborhood in Seattle. Note that although the boundaries are close to area roads, during Production Quality Control they would be slightly corrected so that their alignment with this physical feature is exact.
We Respond Swiftly to Customer Feedback
We encourage our customers to contact us with questions or comments about our data. Many customers also pass along end user feedback, which we also respond to.
Response times vary, but we aim to process a request, fix any problems with the data and let our customer know what actions we’ve taken within 1-2 weeks.
Below is an example of a change we made because of customer feedback. One of our social media customers asked us to adjust our boundaries around docks in a Seattle port. Rather than cutting around each dock individually, our customer asked us to move the boundary so that it skirts the entire dock area.
Clik here to view.
We originally drew the neighborhood boundary around each Puget Sound dock one by one – but based on customer feedback, we redrew the boundary to encompass the whole dock area.
Another type of response we receive concerns neighborhood names. Neighborhood names are somewhat changeable, so we include a primary name as well as a list of alternate names in our database.
Below is the Northgate neighborhood in Seattle, with its two alternate names in parentheses (Northwest Seattle and North Seattle).
Clik here to view.
Primary and alternate neighborhood names.
Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries
Our Neighborhood Boundaries cover 156,000+ neighborhoods in North America, 19,000+ in Europe and 7,900+ in South America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. That amounts to over 180,000 neighborhood boundaries in 67 countries worldwide.
With close attention paid to completeness of coverage, accuracy and quarterly updates, we maintain the industry standard in Neighborhood Boundaries.
Contact us today to learn how to integrate Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries into your application.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.