How We Score a County and Order the Channels
Two things on every county page come from a formula: the Local Online Reach Index (LORI), and the ranking of seven marketing channels. This page lays out both, including what we leave out, so you can check the work or disagree with the weights.
Purpose
What the Score Is Meant to Answer
A marketing plan for a county of 20 towns and a plan for a single dense city should not look alike. LORI puts a number on the difference: the higher it is, the more rivals, towns, households and money a business has to reach. It is a way to compare places, not a prediction for any one company.
Ingredients
Six Measures and Their Weights
| Measure | Weight | How it is measured | Census source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rivals | 25% | Employer locations in all industries per 1,000 residents | County Business Patterns 2022, population estimates 2023 |
| New openings | 20% | Change in employer locations from 2017 to 2022 | County Business Patterns |
| Towns | 20% | Named places with 2,500 or more residents (in-county part only) | Place population estimates |
| Household income | 15% | Median household income | Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates |
| Spread | 10% | Share of residents who live outside any named place | County and place estimates |
| Size | 10% | Resident population | Population estimates |
Each measure is converted to a percentile among U.S. counties with 20,000 or more residents before it is weighted.
Percentiles
Why Percentiles, and What Happens When a Part Is Missing
A percentile is the share of ranked counties (1,822 of them) that fall below a given county on a measure, so every ingredient lands on the same 0 to 100 scale. The weighted average of those percentiles is the LORI score, and counties are ranked by it, among all counties and among the 400 markets on this site.
Some parts do not exist for every market. Connecticut's income and growth figures come from 2021 files, so its income percentile is dropped; city-type markets (independent cities, the five New York boroughs, Washington, DC) have no useful count of towns or spread, so those two parts are dropped. The remaining weights are scaled up to total 100%.
Channel order
From Percentiles to a Ranking of Seven Channels
| Channel | Percentiles that feed it | Weights |
|---|---|---|
| Local SEO landing pages | Towns, density of trades and cleaning firms, spread | 45%, 30%, 25% |
| Google Maps and Business Profile | Trades and cleaning density, restaurants and salons, rivals | 40%, 30%, 30% |
| Google Ads | New openings, rivals, size | 35%, 35%, 30% |
| Bing Ads | Household income, density of advice-led offices | 70%, 30% |
| Meta Ads | Size, restaurants and salons, spread | 35%, 35%, 30% |
| Custom website | New openings, share of very small locations, growth of trades and cleaning firms | 40%, 35%, 25% |
| AI search (GEO) | Density of advice-led offices, household income, share of larger locations | 50%, 30%, 20% |
Missing parts for city-type markets and Connecticut count as the middle (50th percentile) in the channel scores.
Sorting
How the Seven Scores Become an Order
Raw channel scores would let the same channel win nearly everywhere, because some measures run high for most large counties. So each score is compared with the average and spread of that channel across all 400 markets, and the seven are sorted on how unusual each one is for the county in question. The top two are marked as the place to start, the next three as a second wave and the last two as later work. A tiny adjustment breaks near-ties.
That is why a channel can rank last in a county where its raw number is still high: other channels stood out more. The page text says so when that happens.
Category groups
Three Groups of Businesses Used in the Channel Scores
The Census tables we use sort businesses into fifteen categories. For the channel scores they fall into three groups. Local services are remodelers, roofers, electricians, plumbing and heating firms, auto repair shops, cleaning firms and landscapers. Advice-led offices are law firms, dental offices, physician practices, real estate offices, insurance agencies and accounting firms. Consumer businesses are sit-down restaurants and hair and beauty salons.
Counts are employer locations only. Sole proprietors with no staff do not appear in these files, so the real field is always larger than the table.
Other figures
Look-Alikes, Permits and Special Cases
Look-alikes are the six markets among our 400 nearest to a county on population, income, score, rivals per 1,000 residents, new openings, towns and spread. Permits are housing units authorized by building permit (Building Permits Survey), shown per 10,000 residents for 2025 with a same-months comparison for 2026. Connecticut is listed by its eight historic counties, with 2021 population, income and business counts and no permits. A city that spans two counties counts only for the part inside the county.
Limits
What These Numbers Cannot Tell You
- No search behavior. We do not know how many people search for a service in a county, what ads cost there or which businesses rank.
- No client results. Nothing on these pages comes from a GetPhound client account.
- No forecast. A channel order is a reading of data, not a promise of leads, rankings or timelines.
- Your own customers come first. A business that already knows where its customers come from should weigh that above any county average.
- Lag. Business counts are for 2022 and population for 2023; each figure on a county page shows its year. Found a mistake? Email hello@getphound.com.
Sources
Public Census Files
Population Estimates (Vintage 2023), County Business Patterns (2022 and 2017), Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (2023), the Building Permits Survey and the 2023 Gazetteer.
Talk to us
Want Your Own Market Read Aloud?
Tell us what you do and where your customers are, and we will walk through the same numbers with you. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com to book a session with our CEO.