Studies

A StreetProof study is a set of findings computed from our observation ledger — the append-only record of every verified sighting of branded vehicles, storefronts, and signage our fleet cameras and scouts have made. Not a survey, not a scrape of other directories, not an estimate. Every number in a study is the answer to a query over things we physically photographed, and the evidence behind each observation sits in the same ledger the study reads from.

That produces a methodology promise most published statistics can't make: each figure ships with the query that generated it, and the number regenerates from live data. A stat quoted from us six months ago can be re-run today — same query, current ledger — and you can watch how it moved. Individual findings get their own permanent stat pages: one fact, one URL, one chart, so a citation points at a living number instead of a screenshot of a dead PDF. The full collection and verification pipeline is on the methodology page, including the part where we tell you what our data can't show. Aggregate findings are licensed CC BY 4.0: republish freely with attribution.

A concrete example of the kind of statistic this produces: the digital-gap-rate — the share of physically observed businesses in a city with no detectable web presence at all. These are real operations, photographed on real streets, with wrapped trucks or storefront signage, that are invisible to every search engine and AI assistant. Nobody else can compute this number, because computing it requires knowing which businesses physically exist independently of the web — which is exactly the record the ledger is. Its honest limits travel with it: presence checks are point-in-time, and an ambiguous check is reported as “unknown,” never counted as absence.