How Each Pennsylvania Place Gets Its Score
The same recipe is used for all 152 places. Below is the short version, the files behind it, how places were chosen and what the score cannot tell you.
The short version
Four Measures, Averaged
We take four numbers for each place, turn each into a percentile among all 152 places, and average the four. Two numbers describe the county (how competitive its local-search industries are, and how many such businesses it has per 10,000 residents). Two describe the place itself (median household income and residents per square mile). Each place is matched with the county that holds most of its residents.
Which industries count? The fifteen types of employer that depend most on being found in search: law offices, dentists, physicians, real estate, insurance, accounting, plumbing and HVAC, roofing, electrical work, remodeling, landscaping, auto repair, restaurants, salons and janitorial services.
Inputs
Files Used and What We Take From Each
| Census file | Figures taken | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| ACS 5-year estimates | Residents, income, age, housing, language, commuting, education, jobs | 2018 to 2022 |
| Population estimates | Change in headcount since 2020 | 2020 to 2023 |
| County Business Patterns | Employer sites by industry, per county | 2017 and 2022 |
| Gazetteer | Town center position and land area | 2023 |
All published by the U.S. Census Bureau. No client data is used.
Choosing places
Why These 152 Pennsylvania Places
The list favors places people search for by name: the larger cities, county seats, college and tourism towns, and business districts. It has 122 cities and boroughs and 30 census-designated communities. Townships are not listed separately because the Census does not report them as places; a business in a township is best served by the page for the nearest named town, and many of those names appear in each page's list of nearby places.
Resident counts for boroughs can look small because boroughs are small by area, even when they anchor a busy commercial district. Pages say so where it matters. Local research for each page begins with municipal, county and chamber of commerce sources, and every page is compared against all our other pages before it is published.
Caveats
What the Score Does Not Do
- It counts businesses. Search volume, rankings and traffic are not in it, and we promise no timeline.
- County figures stand in for the town and may describe an area far larger than it.
- ACS estimates for small boroughs are rough, so treat scores within a few points as equal.
- The Census tops out at $250,001 for median income and $2,000,001 for median home value.
- Owners with no employees are absent from County Business Patterns.
Next step
Found a Figure That Looks Off?
Send it over and we will check it against the Census source. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.