Contact us for details about targeted online advertising through our websites to reach executives at major companies in the USA and worldwide.

See our April 2009 analysis below of website visit levels (still holding steady at 2008 levels) and the flow of serious investment project enquiries.

Refer also to our Business Roundtable CEO Survey analysis, which also shows no "glimmers of hope" yet.  On the contrary, there's no end in sight.

As expected for a B2B website, our reach on weekdays is dramatically higher, and falls on holidays.

In our first 3 years, our reach grew rapidly to a 600,000+ visitors per year pace (50,000+ per month).

Visits in 2008 slowed by about 10% to 546,751 - very similar to 2006.  This may reflect the global economic recession during 2008.

Visits through October 2009 have been only slightly higher than in 2008 - up 2.4% to a 46,666 / mo average versus 45,563 in 2008.

Visit activity has remained flat since August 2007, shortly before the recession "officially" started in December 2007.

There has been a slight increase in October 2009 visits, but not a significant one yet by comparison to pre-recession levels in 2004 - 2007.

Although we do not compete with magazine publishers, this visit level already exceeds some prominent specialty magazines in this niche.

They have been in circulation for decades to 25,000 to 45,000 recipients such as corporate real estate managers for free (at advertiser expense).

Our level of visit activity reflects the market demand for the unique independent professional referral service we offer for investment project planning.

December 2007 Analysis: Is the hot market for capital investment projects turning cold now?  Visit activity dropped significantly in August - September 2007 after the May - June - July 2007 peak.

Visits went up by surprise in October 2008, but were relatively flat for the year.  See our latest market analysis comments below these charts.

Which states were "hot" in 2008?  See our October 2008 analysis of the research interests of our visitors by state using our new Search: Americas tools.

We also share analysis of our October 2006 - 2007 visitor interests by US state and by global region. 

US Project Trends, 1994 - 2006

Analysis of Business Roundtable

Analysis of Directory Visits by State

October 2006 - 2007

Global Analysis of Regional Directory Visits

Daily visit patterns in 2009 - The pattern for 2009 remains very comparable to the same period in 2008.

It's still about 10% below the 2007 levels (peak year, before recession), but above 2004 - 2006.

We are separately growing our reach among political conservatives in the USA through www.SurgeUSA.org  in 2009.

That new initiative to reach many American conservatives has attracted over 220,000 visitors in the first 9 months.

Daily visit patterns in 2008 - We observed a decline in visits from the June 2007 peak, but levels were fairly stable until July 2008, when they dropped as the financial market problems became apparent.

As of mid-April, despite some political talk of "glimmers of hope" about an economic recovery, we're not seeing it in the flow of website visitors or investment project enquiries.  By the nature of this business, new job creation through capital investment projects in corporate expansion tends to lag rather than lead a recovery, but business executives don't stick their necks out to make large strategic capital investments in the growth of their companies until they see hard evidence through their own sales performance and existing capacity constraints that there is a need to take the risks involved in any such expansion investment.

For now, the flow of website visitors has basically been flat at around a 550,000 per year pace (1500 average visitors per day) since September 2007, a few months before the recession officially started, and a full year before the stock market crash when the banking and insurance problems became obvious in September 2008.  Any initial optimism after the TARP program that the economy would soon recover in 2009 was soon abandoned after the November elections, and especially after Congress started to aggressively push massive new spending programs and a larger and more politically-driven role for government in directing the financial services industry, automobile industry, and other sectors, including the promotion of new industrial policies to favor some sectors and impose new taxes and costs on businesses and the "wealthy".  This populist class warfare between those who pay taxes and those who don't has created a lot of uncertainty about the future of the American economy.

That may not have much impact on short-term speculators in the stock market or other financial markets, but before companies invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to create many new jobs, it's not unexpected that business leaders will want to see some political stability and predictability.  In short, given all the sweeping changes which Congress has been ramming through in the first few months of the Obama administration, what the heck is next on their agenda?  How can one plan seriously for growth when the intrusive impact of government on business may expand very unpredictably?  In this context, investment may actually continue in some foreign markets which - even if not terribly attractive - are at least fairly predictable risks. 

Meanwhile, the United States is facing the sort of environment of political and economic uncertainty which has traditionally been more of a problem in developing countries with excessive government spending, debt, and social instability.  That has typically been accompanied by investor expectations of a higher risk/reward benefit, as in markets perceived to have high growth potential, and a higher ROI even if the corporate cost of capital is relatively low by comparison, particularly through borrowing and equity raised in more stable markets at lower rates than local ones.

That is not really the case in the present environment.  The corporate credit market squeeze in the US market (as well as Europe and elsewhere) limits the investment project potential just about anywhere.  As investment activity picks up again once the global recession abates, the capital investment activity seems likely to grow slowly and may grow first and fastest in those places (from a global perspective) which are perceived to offer the best long-term potential.  Typically, the flow of projects will lag the end of a recession.  The flow of enquiries may pick up, as executives start to plan ahead during the recession to look for their next growth opportunities, but they won't push forward with their plans until higher confidence returns that the new investments will pay off as expected.

For now, the flow of visitors and project enquiries seems to have stabilized.  It didn't crash dramatically with the financial crisis.  Executives didn't stop expecting their companies to grow and prosper in the future.  They're just not convinced yet that this is the time to do it.  They may plan ahead, but they are still making cuts rather than investments as they prepare for a better economy at some point.  The current political environment doesn't boost confidence that this is the time to invest, and even if there were such confidence among some executives, the credit markets and their current levels of profitability and cash flows won't make it easy to do so.  The risk of significant tax changes for businesses and their investors, not just at the state but also at state and local levels, also complicates theit planning scenarios.

One month certainly doesn't make a trend, but the above chart of monthly visit levels reflects an unexpected increase in visitors in October 2008 to levels which have not been reached since July 2007, other than the brief bounce in February 2008 as reported previously.  We are not yet aware of anything specific which would explain a surge in daily visits in the second half of October.  There was no significant new marketing activity or content on our part during this period which would explain the surge.  This was, however, the month of extensive government intervention to stabilize financial markets worldwide, and it also coincided with a rapid decline in world oil prices to roughly half the levels of a few months ago.  There was also a rapid reversal of the weakness of the US dollar in Europe.

It remains too early to tell whether this activity is a temporary anomaly, or perhaps an indicator of a turning point toward economic recovery in 2009.  Another surprising fact is that this surge coincided with the massive October decline in the US and foreign stock markets, and the first reports of negative US GDP growth for the third quarter, with extremely pessimistic consumer confidence numbers and other economic statistics.  Perhaps some growth plans for 2007 and 2008 which had been shelved by executives are being dusted off in case the US and global economy improves in 2009, given the typically long lead time for projects.

We'll soon see whether the minor surge in visits in October is sustained.  In any case, the US presidential election and the expected changes in the House and Senate may dramatically alter some assumptions about the US economy and investment climate relative to other countries.  The trend for the year is often apparent by the end of March.  December is generally a weak month in any case because of holidays.

The more direct impact on US investment activity often comes from changes in state governors.  Regardless of whether the new policies are more pro-investment or not than the predecessor, it takes time for the changes to play out.  The campaign promises often cannot be easily converted into actual policy changes which alter the business environment or even tax costs.  They may indicate the intended direction of change, but as with any governmental bureaucracies, it may take time for the intended changes to be implemented, if ever.

We also provide charts which make it easy to visualize trends in CEO expectations for their company growth in sales, job creation, and capital investment as well as US GDP growth assumptions as reported by the Business Roundtable through their quarterly surveys.  During 2007 and the first three quarters of 2008, this data did not seem to be reflecting the same economic doom and gloom picture as was being spread by the US politicians and news media during this election cycle.  Once the November 2008 election results are behind us, as well as the October stock market decline and the unprecedented level of US and foreign government intervention in the financial markets, it will be interesting to see whether the CEO Survey shows any dramatic changes.

Analysis of Business Roundtable CEO Survey 2002-2008 Results

As we first noted in our September 2007 review of the decline in website visit activity in August, there was a sharp decline in the number of visits at the end of 2007  The reason for this is not entirely clear, but the low visits in December 2007 relative to prior months seem to have been primarily caused by a more dramatic drop than usual in the second half of the month during the Christmas and New Years holidays. 

January 2008 also got off to a slow start as expected, but then picked up later in the month.  This seemed to coincide with more economic uncertainties in the US market - including extensive media coverage and political commentary about the risk of an economic slowdown or recession, followed by sharp interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and plans for a fiscal stimulus package in Congress, including some potential tax breaks for businesses.  As the month ended, however, the basic economic (and political) picture for 2008 was still ambiguous even though many corporate earnings reports for 2007 were looking pretty good - with the exception of some of the massive write-offs of subprime mortgage securities in the financial services industry and the related downturn in residential construction.

The trend in daily and monthly website visit activity as shown above can be influenced by many factors other than the level of business interest in the planning of capital investment projects.  One must therefore be cautious about attributing causes to such effects, but the downturn was steady enough for several months to be noteworthy.  As our scheduled marketing activities increase once again in 2008, it will be interesting to see how visit levels respond.

For example, many of the visitors arrive via Google search results because we openly share so much content related to this niche market.  We have no control, however, over the way that Google searches work.  A change in the way that Google ranks our pages for keyword relevance relative to others, or the emergence or promotion of other websites with relevant content, can significantly alter our level of visit activity regardless of the actual level of economic activity in the market.

Over time, however, it is interesting to note that the level of visits to our websites has grown very steadily since the start of 2004 until July 2007.  It is not unusual to have a downturn in visit activity during the summer months, but it usually bounces back up pretty quickly in the fall, as shown by the 30 day moving average lines.  In early September 2007, however, the 2006 and 2007 moving average lines crossed for the first time on the way down, after nearly doing so in April 2007.  It bounced right back up to August levels in October, but it is too early to predict a clear trend for 2008.

In short, the annualized pace of visits has dropped from over 700,000 per year in June 2007 to just over 500,000 in September, but bounced back up to over 600,000 again by February 2008.  The downturn was a surprisingly rapid change from what seemed to be a steadily upward trend in visit levels for the last 4 years until that time.  It is too early to tell which way the trend will go from here, but we still had over 600,000 visits as expected in 2007, or roughly a 6% gain over 2006.  We had predicted at the end of 2006 that the rapid growth of recent years would plateau at some point, but we still expect continued growth from this level in 2008.  Instead of 607,312 visits for 2007, we originally expected well over 620,000, and were somewhat surprised by the spring and summer 2007 surge to a much faster pace.  In any case, we still expect comparable visit levels in 2008, probably reaching 600,000 or more visitors again for the year.

Once again, as cautioned at left, it is risky to infer trends from a short period of data which may not be representative of real changes in market conditions.  For example, we have not attempted to correlate the above data to historical records such as the flow of completed commercial real estate transactions worldwide for industrial and office space.

It is simply interesting to note the coincidence with turmoil in the financial markets during the summer of 2007, and in particular the residential real estate market and the impact on the availability and cost of credit, which can influence the cost and financial viability of capital investment projects.

Furthermore, this led to widespread concern about the risks of a recession in the USA, although it certainly seems premature to predict anything more than slower growth in the context of continued strength in global markets.

Turmoil in the US (and UK) banking industry and commercial paper market, and media speculation about this as yet another financial "crisis" and risk of recession, may have temporarily affected the level of planning activity by companies for future capital investment projects.

In other words, some planning activity for future capital investment projects may have been temporarily shelved for a while in summer 2007, which could explain the downturn in visit activity for our business location research websites.  Executives may well have been waiting to see whether this latest "crisis" in the economy was really going to have any visible impact on their own business activity.

A similar situation had seemed to occur in late 2006 when there was also a lot of negative media speculation, particularly around the time of the US elections that year, about when the economy would turn down.  Within a few months, however, confidence seemed to have returned and visit levels were breaking records again.

Ultimately, the level of visit activity to our websites should be somewhat indicative of the level of interest in planning of corporate expansion projects, because these websites are designed to be reference tools for that purpose.

The steady increase in visit levels over recent years seems to have accompanied the rapid growth in the number of capital investment projects during 2004 - 2007 after the slower period of 2000 - 2003 which followed the end of the 1990s boom, such as many illusory "dot bomb" projects which soon disappeared.  It is hard to tell, however, whether visit activity will prove to be a useful leading indicator of project activity in this market, as one would intuitively assume.

For example, as more projects are planned, visits should go up.  As fears of a recession rise, planning activity for expansion projects should drop pretty quickly, and then be confirmed by staying low (if the recession risk turns out to be real) until executives start to perceive an upturn in their business activity, utilize their existing capacity, and feel more confident about the need to invest in expansion again.

Thus, visit activity should drop quickly as fears rise (as executives try to avoid expanding into a recession) and should lag a recovery (as executives wait to see whether the upturn is real enough to face capacity constraints, and thus start planning expansion projects again).

We attracted 58,850 visitors in May 2007 - another new record.  We had 61,622 visitors in June 2007, which exceeded a 700,000 per year pace.

In July, we had 57,491 visitors.  August and September 2007 were sharply lower for no immediately obvious reason - although this later proved to coincide with financial market problems.

We had roughly 48,000 visitors in October 2007, and 46,000 in November. 

In short, there are a limited number of projects in the USA each year - such as just a few thousand which create over 50 jobs in new locations.

These add up to billions of dollars in capital investment by companies, and many new jobs, with a very valuable impact on the communities involved.

The purpose of this business is to reach the top executives behind such projects and provide them with a better service, like a global "concierge".

We also offer unique research tools, such as Search: Americas as well as the USA Search or Area Search at www.OnTheShortList.com