How many local businesses come back for their own town?

The same reading by town

Every town in the four sweeps that holds at least forty measured businesses, summed across the nine trades. Seven towns are left out because their cell is smaller than that, and a share of a dozen businesses is an anecdote with a percent sign on it.

Common questions

What does not in the first sixty actually mean?

That we searched Google's Places data for the best business of that kind in the town the listing itself gives, read sixty results, and the business was not among them. It is not a claim that a customer can never find them. Somebody searching their name finds them, and somebody standing in a different part of town gets a differently ordered list.

Why sixty results and not the usual ten or twenty?

Because twenty is a shelf, not a finding. Google returns twenty a page, so a town holding thirty businesses of one kind forces ten of them out whatever they do. We read this at twenty until September 2026 and the shares came out roughly twice as high; at sixty no town in any of the four counties is over the shelf, so the number is about the businesses and not about the page size.

Can I quote these figures?

Yes, with the county and the line of work named, because the spread between cells is wider than any single figure. The page is published under CC BY and the method is above. If you want the underlying per-business rows for a story, ask.

How often is this re-measured?

Each figure carries an expiry date in the ledger it is rendered from. When a sweep passes it the number stops rendering and the build fails, rather than the page quietly showing last season's reading.