Solve address matching problems with the free universal identifier for places

Generate a Placekey

Enter a U.S. address to find the Placekey associated with that place. In another country? Try our API!

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What is Placekey?

Placekey is a free, universal standard identifier for any physical place, so that the data pertaining to those places can be shared across organizations easily.

However, Placekey goes beyond just an identifier. It’s a movement of organizations and individuals that prize access to data. Placekey members want geospatial data that is easily joined and combined...because real answers come from combining data from many different sources. It is a philosophy that data should be easy to access, and data should not be hoarded. These members believe that data, when combined, can do massive good.

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How does Placekey work?

The “What” and “Where” of any physical place

When both parts of a Plackey come together, the final result reads as What@Where. This is a unique way of shedding light on both the descriptive element of a place as well as its geospatial position in the physical world via a single identifier.

The first three characters refer to the Address Encoding, creating a unique identifier for a given address. An address at “555 Main Street Suite 105” will have a different Address Encoding than “555 Main Street Suite 106.” However, "444 Second Street, Suite 4" will have the same address encoding as "444 2nd St. #4" to adjust for common address formats.

The second set of three characters in the What Part refers to the POI Encoding. If a specific place has a location name (like "Central Park") and is already included in the Placekey reference datasets, these characters will be present. The benefit of the POI Encoding is that it can point to a specific point-of-interest that may have existed at a certain address at a given point in time.

The Where Part, on the other hand, is made up of three unique character sequences, built upon Uber’s open source H3 grid system. This information in the Where Part is based on the centroid of that place. In other words, we take the latitude and longitude of a specific place and then use a conversion function to determine a hexagon in the physical world, representing about 15,000 sq. meters, containing the centroid of that place. The Where Part of the Placekey is, therefore, the full encoding of that hexagon.

Read the docs
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Founding Partners

Data and technology integration partners

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CARTO
CARTO

CARTO

The Carto platform empowers everyone, from business analysts to data scientists, to turn location data into business outcomes. Our open, cloud software offers visual insights on where things happen, why they happen and predict what will happen in the future. We accelerate innovation, find efficiencies, power new use cases and disrupt business models through the use of Location Intelligence. Carto combines spatial and temporal data to power business outcomes.

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Cherre
Cherre

Cherre

Cherre provides investors, insurers, real estate advisors, and other large enterprises with a platform to collect, resolve, and augment real estate data from hundreds of thousands of public, private, and internal sources.

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Commerce Signals
Commerce Signals

Commerce Signals

Commerce Signals helps companies make better, faster decisions using some of the best consumer spending data available. Our aggregate, anonymized view of U.S. credit and debit card spending behavior provides retailers and other direct-to-consumer companies with powerful insights to understand competitive performance and improve marketing efficiency.

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Environics Analytics
Environics Analytics

Environics Analytics

Environics is an evidence based consultancy, delivering relevant research solutions and providing insight you can act on.

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Epistemix
Epistemix

Epistemix

Epistemix empowers leaders to make better decisions by simulating how diseases, ideas, and emergent phenomena spread through communities.

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Esri
Esri

Esri

Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, offers the most powerful geospatial cloud available, to help customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results.

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Regrid
Regrid

Regrid

Regrid (makers of landgrid.com) is dedicated to putting America online parcel by parcel, and works with governments, developers, neighborhood groups, and passionate individuals to gather and present property information in clear, actionable ways

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SafeGraph
SafeGraph

SafeGraph

SafeGraph curates the most accurate and precise database of global points of interest each month to power applications, platforms, and services with a location component. As a source of truth for the physical world, SafeGraph data provides an up-to-date record of where places are located and detailed attribution about each of those places, such as when it opened or closed, what type of place it is, what other places it is affiliated with, and how people interact with that location.

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Unfolded
Unfolded

Unfolded

Pioneering Advanced Spatial Analytics and Visualization

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Veraset
Veraset

Veraset

Veraset is a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) company fueling a deep understanding of population movement for innovators and problem solvers.

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Contributing Partners

Placekey supporters and users

Coastal Regional Commission
Coastal Regional Commission
CompStak
CompStak
Competitive Analytics Professionals
Competitive Analytics Professionals
Cook County Assessor
Cook County Assessor
CoreLogic
CoreLogic
CostQuest
CostQuest
CrowdAI
CrowdAI
Cuebiq
Cuebiq
DATAMARK
DATAMARK
DataSF
DataSF
Destiny Consulting Services
Destiny Consulting Services
Direct Relief
Direct Relief
Domo
Domo
Downtown Reno Partnership
Downtown Reno Partnership
Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet
Durham County
Durham County
Enigma
Enigma
Estated
Estated
Estornuda.me
Estornuda.me
Experian
Experian
Fiddlehead
Fiddlehead
Fifth Third Bank
Fifth Third Bank
Flowsense
Flowsense
FullContact
FullContact

Visit our partners page to see all Placekey members

Get ready to unlock new insights on physical places