Since becoming an Overture Maps Foundation member in February, BrightQuery has offered global coverage of locations, organizations and address entities for developers and enterprises seeking to receive interoperable open map data.
One of the more interesting features of the collaboration is BrightQuery’s ability to obtain government-records, which come from 100,000 federal, state, and local agencies. “BrightQuery’s government records are all open source, though they are often hard to find and challenging to parse and match with other records. They assist with tracking online behavior by monitoring the regulatory and legal conduct of companies and individuals officially associated with companies,” said Jose Plehn, BrightQuery CEO and founder. “For example, they indicate whether a place of business is operational or has shut down, and what product or service categories the business performs.”
Access to the Global Entity Reference System, or GERS, is also a crucial part of Overture membership as developers seek to attach visible places to maps. “GERS is the connective tissue linking places and addresses to companies and people. Every record needs a permanent distinct ID, which GERS provides reliably and consistently,” Plehn said. “Matching records across sources can introduce uncertainty due to inaccurate or incomplete information, such as with addresses or names, GERS provides near-certainty by virtue of them being permanent and unique.”
BrightQuery’s global reach covers more than 324 million organizations, 512 million locations, and 1.2 billion people across 222 countries. This enormous reach strengthens Overture’s mission of expanding and delivering open map data, said Will Mortenson, Overture Maps Foundation executive director.
“This collaboration is more than just a new membership. It is a vital step forward in our shared vision to democratize location data,” Mortenson said. “By integrating BrightQuery’s business and point-of-interest intelligence into our ecosystem, we are poised to strengthen our mission of expanding and delivering open map data dramatically to developers and creators worldwide.”
Mortenson said that the inclusion of BrightQuery proves that when industry leaders collaborate, Overture can break down data silos and build a standard for everyone. “We are excited to see what our community of developers, urban planners, and technologists will build using this newly enriched data. The map of the future is open, and together, we are building it step by step,” he said.
Overall, Mortensen said that the BrightQuery and Overture partnership will be the ultimate equalizer for hidden mom-and-pop shops. “In the past, if a small business didn’t have the time or money to build a website and juggle online profiles, they were practically invisible to mapping apps and search engines. Now, BrightQuery bypasses that digital rat race entirely by pulling business locations straight from official public records, like tax filings and local licenses,” Mortensen said. “Once that real-world data hits Overture’s shared open map, it instantly ripples out to the major tech platforms that power our daily searches, like Microsoft, Meta, and TomTom. The bottom line is that small business owners no longer have to be tech-savvy marketers just to get noticed–simply filing the paperwork to open their physical doors automatically puts them on the digital map everywhere.”
