Behind the California Ad Competition Index
The 322 California city guides all use one formula and one set of public files. This page gives the short version, the ingredients, how the writing is done, and the limits.
In short
One Score, Four Percentile Ranks
Each city gets four percentile ranks (0 to 100) among all 322 cities, and the score is their average. A city at 90 on one measure is higher than 90% of the others on it.
Ingredients
What Each Rank Measures
| Measure | Scope | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| County Ad Competition Index | County | Employer locations per resident across twelve ad-heavy trades, compared with U.S. counties |
| Ad-heavy businesses per 10,000 residents | County | How densely those trades are packed into the county |
| Median household income | City | Richer customers draw more advertisers and larger budgets |
| Residents per square mile | City | More businesses within reach of the same searcher |
The trades: law, dentistry, physicians, real estate, insurance, accounting, roofing, plumbing and HVAC, electrical, remodeling, landscaping and auto repair.
Data and writing
Sources, and How Each Page Gets Written
All figures are U.S. Census Bureau files: the American Community Survey 5-year estimates for 2018-2022, the 2023 population estimates, County Business Patterns for 2017 and 2022, and the 2023 Gazetteer. The city list is a selection, including ten larger unincorporated communities the Census reports as places.
For each city we read local public sources and record neighborhoods, employers and local patterns with their links. The page is written from that record and the numbers. Scripts then compare it with every page on our sites and send back anything that repeats a sentence or leans on untraceable figures.
Limits
What the Index Cannot Tell You
- It counts businesses, not advertisers, and says nothing about click prices, search volumes or lead costs.
- It is not drawn from our results; no client data is used.
- County figures describe the whole county, which may dwarf the city.
- ACS estimates for small cities can be rough.
- Businesses without employees are not counted.
Next step
Need a Number Checked?
Write to us and we will compare it with the original Census file. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.