Maintaining an accurate Places dataset at scale is challenging: Businesses are always changing, with 1 in 4 businesses opening, closing, or relocating each year. This requires a constant supply of fresh data to remain up-to-date. However, fragmented approaches and hesitant sharing have traditionally led to incomplete and outdated location data.
At Overture, we are taking a different approach by combining signals from our community to build a robust and up-to-date dataset that benefits everyone. This shared open data is integrated into maps and location services used by billions of people worldwide.
Regular Places Data Updates
We are excited to share that starting with our June 2026 release, we’ve been updating the “operating status” of Overture Places data in the United States.
To implement this change, we reset all operating status fields to be blank by default in the May release. The property now only carries a value where we are actively receiving signals, either from data providers or through our signals pipeline.
So far, the operating status for 8.5 million POIs in the United States have been refreshed based on collective signals contributed by our members.
Real-World Signals
Instead of relying solely on user feedback or web scraping, we leverage real-world data from Overture members who regularly interact with businesses. Meta, TomTom, Tripadvisor, and Uber currently contribute the aggregated, anonymized “heartbeat” signals behind our monthly updates — and because each one sees the world differently, together they catch changes that any individual company would miss.
These signals come from securely combined, anonymized data: foot traffic at business locations, online and offline interactions, and similar activity. A pulse of activity means a business is alive and operating. Collaborating on this mechanism means we can reduce redundant efforts to keep track of this basic but highly volatile data set.
“Every day, Uber’s platform generates millions of real-world interactions with global businesses. They serve as a natural signal for whether a place is open and active. By contributing these anonymized, aggregated signals to Overture, we can help maintain accurate, fresh location data that benefits the entire ecosystem, including Uber’s drivers, riders, and merchants. This collaborative model empowers us to do more together than any single company could do alone.”
— Praveen Subramani, Director of Product, Uber
Our June release was only the start. Over the coming months, we will roll out more updates to process additional signals and improve data freshness at a growing scale.
The Benefits of Contributing Signals
We invite organizations to share signals about Places securely. Contributing signals provides the following benefits:
- Collectively maintain the POIs you care about, allowing you to e.g., shift focus to developing richer, higher-value data initiatives
- Access specific data products including real-time updates and historical trends
- Collaborate closely with a diverse group of leading geospatial organizations to shape the future of open mapping
By contributing to this collaborative model, Overture members help address common mapping challenges and ensure up-to-date, accurate data that benefits the entire ecosystem.
Join the Overture Community
Overture Maps is building an interoperable open data ecosystem for map data. We invite business listings managers, Places data syndicators, and all map data holders to contribute their datasets. Help create a definitive open resource that becomes the foundation of local search, navigation, and countless other location-based applications.
Stay connected: follow us on LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky for the latest updates. Sign up for Overture’s monthly newsletter for the latest updates on our journey in transforming map data distribution.
