Places Insights provides brand information for many categories of places. For example:
- For the category of "ATMs, Banks, and Credit Unions", the brands data contains an entry for each of the brands PNC, UBS, and Chase banks.
- For the category "Automotive Rentals", the data contains an entry for each of the brands Budget, Hertz, and Thrifty.
A typical use case for querying the brands dataset is to join it with a query on the place data to answer questions such as:
- What is the count of all stores by brand in an area?
- What is the count of my top three competitor brands in the area?
- What is the count of brands of a specific category, such as "Fitness" or "Gas Station", in the area?
About the brands dataset
The brands dataset for the US is named places_insights___us.brands.
Brands dataset schema
The schema for the brands dataset defines three fields:
- id: The brand ID.
- name: The brand name, such as "Hertz" or "Chase".
- category: The brand type, such as "Gas Station", "Food and Drink", or "Lodging". For a list of possible values, see Category values.
Use brands dataset in a query
The places dataset schema
defines the brand_ids field. If a place in the places dataset is associated
with a brand, then the brand_ids field for the place contains the
corresponding brand ID.
A typical query that references the brands dataset performs a JOIN with
the places dataset based on the brand_ids field.
For example, to find the count of the number of McDonald's restaurants within 2000 meters of the Empire State Building in New York City:
SELECT WITH AGGREGATION_THRESHOLD COUNT(*) FROM PROJECT_NAME.places_insights___us.places places, UNNEST(brand_ids) AS brand_id LEFT JOIN PROJECT_NAME.places_insights___us.brands ON brand_id = brands.id WHERE ST_DWITHIN(ST_GEOGPOINT(-73.9857, 40.7484), point, 2000) AND brands.name = "McDonald's" AND business_status = "OPERATIONAL"
The next query returns the count of the number of banks in New York City that belong to a brand, grouped by brand name:
SELECT WITH AGGREGATION_THRESHOLD brands.name, COUNT(*) AS store_count FROM PROJECT_NAME.places_insights___us.places places, UNNEST(brand_ids) AS brand_id LEFT JOIN PROJECT_NAME.places_insights___us.brands ON brand_id = brands.id WHERE brands.category = "ATMs, Banks and Credit Unions" AND "bank" IN UNNEST(places.types) AND business_status = "OPERATIONAL" GROUP BY brands.name ORDER BY store_count DESC;
The following image shows the counts by brand:

Category values
The category field for a brand can contain the following values:
| Category type value | 
|---|
| ATMs, Banks and Credit Unions | 
| Automotive and Parts Dealers | 
| Automotive Rentals | 
| Automotive Services | 
| Dental | 
| Electric Vehicle Charging Stations | 
| Electronics Retailers | 
| Fitness | 
| Food and Drink | 
| Gas Station | 
| Grocery and Liquor | 
| Health and Personal Care Retailers | 
| Hospital | 
| Lodging | 
| Merchandise Retail | 
| Movie Theater | 
| Parking | 
| Telecommunications |