Maponics Neighborhood Data Compared to Zillow
As companies evaluate sources for geographic neighborhood data, there are many factors they should consider to ensure that the dataset meets their requirements, both for the short-term and the long-term. With the growth of open source software and crowd source data, there are more and more of what appear to be low-cost solutions available in the market. But, as companies who go down that road often find, their initial ROI calculations do not take into account costs associated with integration and maintenance and more importantly, don’t sufficiently consider the quality, currency and coverage of the dataset itself in terms of usability and value to their customers.
One open data source often compared to Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries is Zillow Neighborhood Boundaries. Zillow, a real estate search portal, offers their dataset under a Creative Commons License and relies on users’ contributions to expand and improve the data over time.
Neighborhood Data Feature Comparison
Below is a side-by-side comparison of Maponics and Zillow neighborhood boundaries1.
Feature |
Maponics |
Zillow |
Geographic Coverage |
170,000 neighborhoods in 2,200 cities around the world. US coverage includes 146,800 neighborhoods in more than 2,000 cities. More than 3 times the number of neighborhoods in the 150 cities covered by Zillow dataset. |
7,000 neighborhoods in about 150 cities. Only in the US.
|
Data Quality |
Data is collected, corroborated, and verified by professional cartographers and resource specialists and subject to Maponics rigorous Quality Assurance standards. |
Crowd-sourced data is typically not subject to tight GIS/mapping standards and may contain topological errors, like gaps, slivers, self-intersects, and other issues that require significant manual work to correct prior to use. |
Data Currency |
The Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries product is updated quarterly with changes, improvements and coverage expansion. |
Updates are generally based on the contributions of users with no commitment to regular releases. Original dataset release of 7,000 neighborhoods was in January 2008. |
Technical Support |
Maponics stands behind all of its products and provides a full range of technical support included with all licensed datasets. |
The data is provided as is under the Creative Common License with no reference to available technical support. |
Extended Attributes |
In addition to names, boundaries, metro, etc., the dataset includes neighborhood type (Macro Neighborhood, Neighborhood and Sub Neighborhood), Social Use and Functional Type. |
Includes names and boundaries only. |
Product Line |
Maponics offers not only neighborhood data but complementary GIS mapping data as well, including School, ZIP Code, and Carrier Route Boundaries. |
No other datasets offered. |
License Type |
Data License Agreement – terms are tailored to use scenario, include rights to predictable updates that improve and expand coverage. No attribution required and no customer data updates needed. |
Creative Common – requires attribution on all pages that show the data and all changes must be distributed under same license terms. Changes require GIS knowledge and expensive GIS tools. |
1- Zillow statistics as of December 2010.
Maponics Neighborhood Data versus “Free” Data
While the comparison above is specific to Zillow’s neighborhood boundaries, many of these general comparison points hold true when comparing Maponics premium-quality GIS data to open-source and public domain data that may be available. At the end of the day, if the data is important to your business or organization, it pays to choose Maponics. Interested in talking to one of our Account Executives? Contact us via email or phone (1-800-762-5158).
