How do you find local websites for advertising in each city?
Part of Lookalike websites
The short answer
Find local websites for advertising one city at a time. Define the market from official place boundaries, choose one strong local publisher as the seed, follow its links, bylines, partners and event listings to nearby outlets, repeat the search in French where the market speaks it, then check each candidate's local share, ownership and selling path before sizing the list.
Key takeaways
- A city plan starts with one good local seed per city, not with a national list filtered by place names.
- A seed's outbound links, writers, partners and shared event listings point to the outlets that cover the same streets.
- French local sites in Canada are found with French local vocabulary, the town's French name and the francophone press networks, not by translating the English query.
- Local means the sampled articles are mainly about the place, with dated bylines; city names in a domain or templated city pages prove nothing.
- The number of sites a city needs comes from its forecast inventory and the flight's goals, not from a fixed quota.
How do you find local websites in a given city?
Local discovery breaks down when it starts nationally. A national list filtered by city names returns sites that mention the city, which is not the same as sites that serve it. The reliable unit is the city itself: one market, one seed, one search trail, one set of checks, then the next city. The lookalike websites hub explains seed based searching in general; this page applies it to places.
The city by city method in seven steps
- Fix the market's edges. Name the city and the towns around it that the client serves. The US Census Bureau's City and Town Population Totals (opens in a new tab) list incorporated places, which keeps the boundary consistent from city to city.
- Pick one local seed. Choose a publisher the client or the planner trusts that covers this city in depth: a city daily, an alternative weekly, a business journal or a neighborhood site.
- Walk the seed's trail. Follow its outbound links, its writers' other bylines, its partners page and the event listings it shares with other outlets.
- Search around the seed. Use exact phrases for local landmarks and institutions, the site: operator to exclude the seed, and before: or after: to find recent coverage.
- Repeat in French where the market speaks it. Run the searches again with French place names and French local vocabulary.
- Check each candidate. Confirm local share, dated bylines, ownership and an ads.txt file before the site joins the city list.
- Size the city, then move on. Compare the list with forecast inventory for that city, record what was found, and start the next city with its own seed.
How can one good local site lead to others?
Local publishers are connected in ways a keyword search does not see. They link to each other's reporting, share writers and photographers, list the same events and work with the same local partners. A strong seed holds that map in its own pages. Google's search help (opens in a new tab) documents the operators that make the trail repeatable: quotes for an exact phrase, site: to search within or around a domain, a minus sign to leave a word out, and before: and after: for dates.
| Trail | Where to look on the seed | What it finds | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outbound links | Links inside recent local stories and any partner or friends list | Outlets the seed's editors cite as sources on local matters | Links to city government, schools and charities, which are not publishers |
| Writers' bylines | Author pages and contributor bios | Other outlets where the same local writers publish | Freelancers who also write for national sites with little local coverage |
| Shared event listings | Community calendars and event roundups | Neighborhood sites, arts weeklies and campus papers listing the same events | Ticketing and listings platforms that only republish feeds |
| Partners and syndication | Pages naming content partners or shared stories | Sister papers in nearby towns and regional news collaboratives | Shared owners, which a later ownership check groups together |
| Related searches | Google's related searches after a seed based query | Phrases local readers use, leading to outlets the planner did not know | Suggestions are generated from how people search, not from a publisher list |
Google says its related searches "are automatically generated based on what our systems understand about how people search." That makes them a source of local vocabulary, not of verified outlets. Partner pages are the trail that needs a second look: sister papers can share one owner, and the ownership guide shows how to group them so a city list does not count one company several times.
How do you find French language local sites in Canada?
Translating the English query can miss French local media. French local outlets describe themselves in their own terms: hebdo, journal communautaire, nouvelles régionales, actualités locales, and the town's French name where it has one. Google's search settings include a Language results filter, which narrows results to French pages once the vocabulary is right.
Sources and searches for French local sites
- The search uses French local vocabulary and French place names, not a word for word translation of the English query.
- The Language results filter in Google Search settings is set to French for the French pass.
- Outside Quebec, the Réseau.Presse member list (opens in a new tab) of francophone minority newspapers is checked for the province or territory in the plan.
- The Local Journalism Initiative's mandated organizations (opens in a new tab), which include a Consortium of Official Language Minority Community Media, are noted as a lead to French community outlets.
- Each French candidate's sampled articles are read in French and confirmed to be about the city, not about France or another province.
- Bilingual sites are recorded with the language of the section that matches the brief.
Réseau.Presse describes itself as the only pan Canadian network of French language newspapers in minority settings, and its list groups members by the Atlantic provinces, Ontario, and the West and territories, with none in Quebec. In Quebec the French local press is the majority press, so the seed method itself does the work: one strong French city outlet leads to the rest. The guides to French Canadian advertising and francophone advertising outside Quebec cover the audience side.
How do you check a local site is a real publisher?
Local discovery attracts sites built to look local. Google's spam policies (opens in a new tab), last updated 28 August 2026, give as an example of doorway abuse "Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page". A city name in the domain or a page per town is not evidence of local reporting.
| Check | Local publisher | Site that only names the city | How to test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local share | Several recent articles about local people, places and decisions | Generic articles with the city name swapped in | Read five recent articles and count those that could only be about this city |
| Bylines and dates | Named writers and clear dates, which Google's news transparency guidance asks for | No authors, undated pages or the same text across town pages | Open author pages and search a distinctive sentence in quotes |
| Who runs it | An about page naming an owner or editor with a local address or contact | No about page, or an owner with no tie to the area | Compare the about page with ads.txt and sellers.json |
| Selling path | An ads.txt file listing authorized sellers | No ads.txt, or one copied from an unrelated site | Open the file at the root domain and read the DIRECT lines |
Google's news transparency guidance (opens in a new tab) asks news sources for "Clear dates and bylines" and information about the company or network behind the content, which gives the second and third checks a published reference. The IAB Tech Lab ads.txt specification (opens in a new tab) covers the fourth. A small local site without ads.txt can still be a real publisher; it simply gives the buyer no published list of authorized sellers to check.
How many local sites does a city plan need?
The number of sites per city comes from inventory: Display & Video 360's Inventory Availability report (opens in a new tab) is meant to "find the predicted number of impressions that match specific targeting criteria", and can be refined by targeting and inventory settings. Run it per city with the city's list and the flight's dates, then add or trim sites against the delivery goal. The programmatic media planning hub covers list size in general.
How does PlacementGraph help find local publishers from one seed?
What does a city by city search look like on a real brief?
Fictional example
A fictional hardware store chain in the Dakotas
An unnamed regional hardware store chain with stores in Fargo, Bismarck, Sioux Falls and Rapid City wants a spring home repair campaign on local sites in each city. The agency plans four cities as four searches.
In Sioux Falls the planner seeds with a city business journal the client reads. Its stories link to a neighborhood news site and a home and garden column on a regional magazine, and one of its reporters also writes for a weekly arts paper. The shared community calendar leads to a campus paper, which the planner notes as an adjacent idea.
Two Fargo candidates turn out to be town by town pages from one site with the same text and no bylines, and they are left out. Bismarck starts from its own seed, a capital city news site, rather than from the Fargo list. Rapid City returns only three sites that pass, and its forecast is thin, so the plan shows the gap instead of padding the list with statewide sites that do not cover the city.
Frequently asked questions
Should a statewide or provincial site count as local for one city?
Only if its sampled articles cover that city regularly. A statewide site with a strong section for the city can be seeded with that section's pages. A site that mentions the city in occasional roundups belongs on a regional list, not on the city's local list, so label it by the geography its articles actually cover.
What if a city has only one local website?
Keep it, check it, and record that the city has a single local publisher. Look at nearby towns' outlets that cover the city, campus papers and local radio or television station sites before concluding. If the city still cannot meet its delivery goal, show that gap to the client instead of filling it with sites that do not serve the city.
Are city guides and event listing sites local publishers?
Some are. A city guide with its own writers, reviews and dated articles about local places can qualify. A listings site that republishes ticketing feeds without editorial work does not, and a tourism site run by a city or a nonprofit visitor bureau falls outside a publisher list. Read the articles and the about page to decide.
Can a list built for one city be reused in another?
Not as a list. The method transfers, but the sites do not, because local publishers serve their own streets. Reuse only the national or regional outlets that cover both cities, and build each city's local part from its own seed and its own checks.
Sources
- City and Town Population Totals: 2020-2025 (opens in a new tab)U.S. Census Bureau
- Refine Google searches (opens in a new tab)Google Search Help
- Membres (opens in a new tab)Réseau.Presse
- Local Journalism Initiative: mandated organizations (opens in a new tab)Canadian Heritage
- Spam policies for Google web search (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central
- Google News policies: transparency (opens in a new tab)Google Publisher Center Help
- ads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers) (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab
- Inventory Availability report (opens in a new tab)Display & Video 360 Help
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.