How the Texas Ad Competition Index Works
The 203 Texas city guides share one scoring method. Below: what is in the score, what it leaves out, where the data comes from and how each page is written and checked.
Limits first
What the Score Does Not Say
- It counts businesses. It is not a count of advertisers and has nothing on click prices, search volumes or lead costs.
- It is not built from our results; no client data is used.
- County figures cover the whole county, which can be far larger than the city.
- ACS numbers for small places are rough estimates.
- Businesses with no employees are left out.
The score
Four Ranks, Averaged
- County ad competition. Taken from our county Google Ads site: locations per resident for twelve ad-heavy trades (law, dentistry, physicians, real estate, insurance, accounting, roofing, plumbing and HVAC, electrical, remodeling, landscaping, auto repair), compared with U.S. counties.
- County density. Those same trades per 10,000 county residents.
- Income. Median household income in the city.
- Density. Residents per square mile of the city.
Each is converted to a 0-100 percentile among the 203 Texas cities, and the four are averaged with equal weight.
Data and process
Where Numbers and Words Come From
Numbers: Census ACS 5-year estimates (2018-2022), 2023 population estimates, County Business Patterns (2017 and 2022) and the 2023 Gazetteer. Fast-growing Texas cities show lower populations in the five-year ACS than in recent estimates, which is a feature of the survey.
Words: for each city we gather facts from public local sources and note neighborhoods and employers with links. We write from those notes and the data, then run checks against every page on all our sites, and rewrite anything that repeats.
Let us know
Doubt a Figure?
Tell us which one and we will verify it against the Census release. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.