What defines the shapes you see when looking at a suitability heat map? Why might you want to distinguish between a DA and an FSA when looking at customer contribution? And what do these really mean? 

Don't let mapping terminology confuse you during the site selection process. Here's your index for better understanding what's behind the acronyms and keywords, and where you'll see them used in PiinPoint.

* note these differ depending on what country you are in
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Correspond to regional municipalities, counties, districts, regions (e.g., Waterloo Region). 

Roughly correspond to cities, townships, towns, villages, or municipalities in Canada (e.g., the City of Waterloo, Town of Elmira).

An area that has 1+ municipalities, equalling a population of at least 100,000, situated around a core area that has at least 50,000 people living there.

A level of geography that represents a group of postal code areas that start with the same three characters, e.g “M4B”. In your account, the main application of this will be for looking at your client data.

Generally, these have a population of fewer than 10,000 persons and are located in CMAs.

The smallest sizes of geography that the government releases to the public. The average DA/Block Group is typically made up of around 500 households. 

The smallest geographical unit in Canada is the Dissemination Block (DB), or the Census Block in the USA. For these areas, only population and household counts are reported. A collection of DBs makes up a DA.

Match your search level to a specific geography. You can see what search level you are on from within your URL:

Search level 4   ---- Provincial geographies
Search level 5   ---- Provincial geographies
Search level 6   ---- Provincial geographies

Search level 7   ---- Census Division
Search level 8   ---- Census Division
Search level 9   ---- Census Division
Search level 10  ---- Census Division

Search level 11   ---- Dissemination Area
Search level 12   ---- Dissemination Area
Search level 13+ ---- Dissemination Area
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Correspond to regional districts (e.g., Fayette County).

These are smaller than counties.

The smallest sizes of geography that the government releases to the public. The average Block Group is typically made up of around 500 households. 

The smallest geographical unit in the USA is the Census Block. For these areas, only population and household counts are reported. A collection of Census Bocks makes up a Block Group.  

Match your search level to a specific geography. You can see what search level you are on from within your URL:

Search level 4   ---- State geographies
Search level 5   ---- State geographies
Search level 6   ---- State geographies

Search level 7   ---- County
Search level 8   ---- County
Search level 9   ---- County
Search level 10  ---- County

Search level 11   ---- Block Group
Search level 12   ---- Block Group
Search level 13+ ---- Block Group