About MarketScout

MarketScout is an independent project that takes public U.S. Census Bureau business data and makes it easy to browse by industry and county.

What this site is

Every number on this site comes from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) survey — the same establishment counts, employment, and payroll figures the federal government publishes for its own economic statistics. MarketScout doesn't collect its own data or run its own surveys; it reformats a public dataset into per-industry, per-county pages so it's easier to look up than a raw government file. See the methodology page for exactly how each figure is calculated.

Who maintains it

MarketScout is built and maintained by Conor Dobbs, an independent developer. It isn't a company or a research team — it's one person's project to make a genuinely useful public dataset easier to use. The underlying dataset is also published as an open GitHub repo, not just packaged into this site.

What this site is not

The figures here are official government statistical estimates, not business advice. Market density is one signal among many for evaluating a location — it doesn't account for local demand, rent, competition quality, or dozens of other factors that matter to an actual business decision. Treat it as a starting point for research, not a verdict.

Get in touch

Found an error, have a question about the data, or want the raw dataset? Email conordobbs@gmail.com, or see the source data and methodology on GitHub: github.com/Contrite42/us-business-density-2023 .