Questions about the data

Where does this data come from?

Every figure comes from a federal statistical release — the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the FBI, the CDC, the EPA, HUD, NOAA, FEMA, the FAA and the Department of Education among 17 active sources. Nothing is bought from a data broker, scraped from a listings site, or estimated to fill a gap. Every source is listed on the data sources page with its terms, coverage and update cadence.

How often does it change?

It depends on the source, and each page says which period its figures cover. Labor and building permits are read monthly, deaths quarterly, and reported crime, rents, the census and school data annually. A page shows when its data was last updated, and that stamp reflects new source data rather than the day the page was rebuilt.

Why does this place have no Area Score?

Because too few of the underlying measures were available for it. A score is withheld rather than calculated from partial data — 14 curated places currently show measurements without one. The methodology sets out exactly which signals must be present.

Why do some cities show crime and others show nothing?

Reported crime is published by police department, not by town, and only where a department reported every month of the year. 2,956 cities have a municipal department whose returns were complete. Many smaller communities are policed by their county and have no department of their own, so there is no figure to show — a partial year is never scaled up to look like a whole one.

Is a high Area Score a recommendation?

No. It is a weighted average of standardized signals, and the weighting is a general-purpose guess about what people care about — not a judgment about you. Someone moving for schools and someone moving for weather should not use the same weights, which is why every profile lets you set your own and see the ordering change.

Why is my town not here?

13,131 profiles are published, and a place appears only when enough authoritative data exists to describe it fairly. Communities below roughly ten thousand residents usually fall outside the surveys that make comparison possible, and publishing a page built from three numbers would not serve anyone.

Something here is wrong. What happens if I report it?

It gets checked against the archived copy of the source that produced it. Every figure is traceable to a stored file, so a correction is a matter of looking rather than arguing. See the corrections policy, or use the report link at the foot of any profile.

Can I use these figures?

The underlying federal data is public. AreaProfile’s own calculations — the scores, signals, percentiles and rankings — are its work; the terms set out what is permitted. If you need the figures behind something for research, ask and they will usually be provided.

Is any of this written by a machine?

The sentences on a profile are produced by rules with explicit numeric conditions, from figures already stored and checked — a statement appears because the numbers behind it crossed a threshold, and the values that triggered it are kept alongside it. No figure anywhere is invented, estimated or inferred to fill a gap.

Not answered here? The methodology covers every calculation, and contact reaches a person.