Businesses are discovered by cross-referencing multiple public sources. No single source is complete, so we use all of them:
- Google Maps — local pack results and business profiles
- Yelp — comprehensive local listings, especially useful for restaurants and services
- Secretary of State business registry — public registries searchable by city and business type
- Chamber of Commerce directories — local and regional chambers typically maintain searchable member directories
- Industry-specific directories — Angi, HomeAdvisor, BBB, OpenTable, local real estate associations, FindAChurch
- Neighborhood and tourism directories — local business associations, city tourism sites, neighborhood district directories
A business is included if it appears in at least two independent sources. Permanently closed businesses are excluded.
We check six sources before concluding a business has no website. Early in this project, 13 out of 35 initially "no website" entries turned out to be wrong — so we don't stop looking early.
- Google Business Profile — the knowledge panel shows the URL entered directly by the owner. Most reliable source.
- Yelp business page — often lists websites not visible in Google search results
- Facebook About section — most business pages list an external website if one exists
- Direct domain guessing — businessname.com, businessnamecity.com, businessnamestate.com, etc. via automated checks
- Chamber / tourism directories — include website links for member businesses
- BBB listing — Better Business Bureau profiles typically include website URLs
Only after all six come up empty is a business marked "No Website." If the only presence is a Facebook page, we record the Facebook URL and mark it Facebook only — that's real and meaningful data.
Platform detection works by fetching each site's HTML source and checking for known signatures. Detection runs in batches against live sites at the time of research.
Sites behind Cloudflare or bot-protection that block automated fetches are marked Unknown/Custom with a note. We never guess platforms we cannot verify from source.
We research local and regional independent businesses. Major national chains (McDonald's, Target, Starbucks, etc.) are excluded — their platforms are already well-documented and they skew the data in ways that aren't useful for understanding local web presence.
Each city's scope includes the city proper plus nearby suburbs and communities. Businesses are organized into six categories: Retail, Restaurant, E-Commerce, Service, Real Estate, and Church.
More cities are being added over time. Each city follows the same research process.
- Platform detection reflects what was detectable at time of research. Platforms change — a business may have moved to a different CMS since we checked.
- Some sites are undetectable due to Cloudflare or custom server configs. These are marked "Unknown/Custom" and noted.
- A heavily customized or headless WordPress site may not expose the usual
wp-contentsignatures. WordPress usage may be undercounted as a result. - This is independent research with no affiliation to WordPress, Automattic, or any platform listed here.
- Data is a snapshot, not a live feed. Research dates are tracked internally.