How these numbers are produced
Source
Every figure in the Local Business Data Index comes from one place: Resquared's database of US local businesses. It is the same database Resquared customers search in the product. It combines a curated layer (business listings with ratings, review counts, hours, and years in business) with a business-universe layer built from US company registries, classified by SIC and NAICS industry codes. No figures are licensed from or scraped off other published reports.
Counting rule: distinct businesses
Headline counts are distinct businesses, not locations. A chain with 40 storefronts in a metro counts once. Where two internal tables disagree on coverage for a category, we report the larger count, because each table has known blind spots the other fills. This usually makes our numbers smaller than storefront counts published elsewhere. That's deliberate.
Metro definition
A metro page covers a ~25 mile (40 km) radius around the anchor city's geographic center, using each business's coordinates, not city-limit boundaries or county names. "Restaurants in Atlanta" means restaurants within ~25 miles of central Atlanta, including suburbs like Marietta and Decatur, which the page lists separately.
Contact-data rules
"Has a direct owner or decision-maker email" excludes generic inboxes: info@, contact@, sales@, office@ and similar prefixes don't count. Sample records shown on public pages have emails masked; full records are shared only after a visitor requests them with their own work email. Rating figures come from the curated layer and include chain locations (they describe the market, not our contact coverage), and each page states the number of rated listings behind its averages.
Freshness
Every page shows the date its data was generated. Pages are regenerated on a recurring schedule from live database queries. Counts move as businesses open, close, and get re-verified, and historical figures are not retroactively edited.
Who publishes this
The Local Business Data Index is published by Resquared, a local-business prospecting platform. That's worth knowing when you read the pages: we sell access to this data, and the index exists to show what's in it. The methodology above is the same regardless.