Methodology

This page documents how the map is generated — where the data comes from, how fresh it is, and what each field on a company's page actually means.

What this site currently shows

As of 5 September 2026, Tickerscape shows two things: a curated dataset of company headquarters locations for 4,000+ stocks listed on U.S. exchanges (NYSE & Nasdaq), and company reference information drawn from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system — legal name, listing venue, shares outstanding and the date they were reported, industry (SIC) classification, and state of incorporation.

It does not currently show market data. There are no share prices, no quotes, no percent change, and no price charts anywhere on the site, and the map is not colored by any market value. Markers are drawn identically because there is no per-company market figure behind them. Adding market data is planned; when it lands, this section will say so and carry a new date.

Everything on the site today is therefore either a location we curated ourselves or a fact a company filed publicly with the SEC. Nothing on it is licensed vendor data.

Data source

Headquarters coordinates are curated by Tickerscape from public company filings and reviewed by hand — the process is described under Headquarters locations below. Company names, listing venues, share counts, industry codes and state of incorporation are read from the SEC's EDGAR system, which is public. Tickerscape does not currently carry a market-data feed.

Headquarters locations

Headquarters coordinates are approximate. They are derived from public company filings — principally the principal-executive-offices address on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings — and then curated and reviewed by hand. They are intended to show regional and city-level clustering — whether companies group together in a given metro area — not to pinpoint an exact street address or building. A given pin may sit a block or more from the real entrance, and you should not rely on these coordinates for any purpose that requires precision.

A related caveat is the difference between a company's operating headquarters and its registered address. Some companies — particularly those incorporated offshore — file an address that is a registered agent or legal domicile (for example in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda) rather than the office where the business is actually run. Where we can identify these cases we work to place the pin at the real operating headquarters and flag the distinction during curation, but some filings resolve only to the registered address. Treat a marker as “this company is associated with roughly this area,” not as a verified physical office location.

How the state company counts are derived

The companies-by-state pages state a count — “689 public companies headquartered in California.” That is a factual claim, so it is worth being precise about what it counts. Every count is computed live from the published dataset at the moment you load the page; none of them is a stored or hand-written figure.

A company is counted in a state when the headquarters address we hold for it names that state. Four kinds of entry are deliberately left out:

• Registered-agent and legal-domicile addresses. Where an entry is identified as a registered address rather than an operating headquarters, it is excluded — otherwise the incorporation-services firms clustered in a handful of Delaware office buildings would inflate that state's total. See Headquarters locations above.
• Headquarters outside the United States. Many companies listed on U.S. exchanges are run from abroad. They appear on the map and have their own pages, but they belong to no U.S. state and are counted in none.
• Second and later share classes. A company with two listed classes of stock is one company, not two, and is counted once.
• Symbols outside the tracked universe. If we hold an address for a symbol that is not in the set of stocks the map currently tracks, it is not counted — the count and the map describe the same universe.

A state needs at least five companies to get a page of its own. Below that the state is listed on the index page instead. The threshold exists because a page built from two rows of a table is a thin page: it serves a reader poorly and it is the shape search engines treat as mass-produced filler.

Each of those pages carries a “Data last updated” date. That is the date the published headquarters dataset was last rebuilt — it is not the date any individual company on the page was reviewed, and a company whose entry has not changed in months still appears under it. When we hold a review date for a specific location, it is shown on that location instead; see what the verification badge means.

The counts inherit every limitation of the underlying addresses described on this page. An address that is stale or that resolves to a filing agent will place a company in the wrong state, and we would rather hear about it than not — the Feedback page is the fastest route.

Location verification — what the badge means

Every headquarters location carries one of three status badges. The badge is a claim about a coordinate and nothing else. It is not an endorsement of the company, a comment on the company's business, or any kind of rating.

• Tickerscape Verified — a person compared these coordinates against satellite imagery and the address on the company's source filing, and confirmed that the pin sits on the right building or site. The badge shows the date of that review.
• Pending review — the address comes from public filings, but no person has confirmed the coordinates yet. The pin is a geocoder's best guess from the filed address. It is usually right, and it is sometimes a block or a town off. Review is ongoing and this set shrinks over time.
• Filed address — the address in the company's filings is one we can identify as a registered agent or legal domicile, a virtual office, or a mailing address, rather than an operating site. The pin is where that address is, which may not be where the company's people work. This badge takes precedence over Tickerscape Verified, because the kind of address is the more useful thing to know; where a person has also checked the coordinate, the badge carries that review date and says so. See below.

What “Filed address” means. A company must give the SEC an address, but the address it gives is not always an office it works from. A registered agent is a firm paid to receive legal mail on the company's behalf — often a single building in Delaware, the Cayman Islands or Bermuda that serves thousands of companies. A virtual office is a rented business address, sometimes with a receptionist and a meeting room. A mailing address may be a PO box or a corporate services desk. All three are ordinary, lawful arrangements, and using one is common and unremarkable — particularly for a smaller or newly-listed company. The badge is not a criticism of the company, and it does not suggest that anything is irregular about it. It exists for one reason: so that you do not read the pin as an office when the filing does not say it is one. In each case the coordinate is honest about the filed address, and the badge is honest about what kind of address that is. Where we can identify the operating headquarters we move the pin and the badge changes with it.

Two limits apply to all three states. Coordinates are approximate by design (see Headquarters locations above) — verification confirms the right building or site, not a doorway. And a verified location can go stale: when a company relocates, the new address does not reach us until its next periodic filing, and the pin is not re-checked until that filing comes up for review — so a location, even a recently reviewed one, can show the previous headquarters for a time after a move. If a pin looks wrong, the Feedback page is the fastest way to tell us, and the map's right-click menu can send the exact coordinates with your message.

Seeing only the verified set. The map toolbar has a Show only Tickerscape Verified locations toggle (keyboard shortcut Y), and the data table has a sortable Verified column carrying the same three states. Turning the toggle on hides every pin that is not Tickerscape Verified — which today is a large share of the map. That is a statement about what we have checked, not about what is wrong: a hidden Pending review pin is usually in the right place, it just has not been through a person yet.

Sector groupings

Companies are grouped into eleven broad sectors — Computing & Electronics; Medicine & Health; Banking & Finance; Property & Landlords; Oil, Gas & Fuel; Power & Water; Raw Materials & Chemicals; Manufacturing & Transport; Retail, Cars & Leisure; Food & Household Goods; and Media & Telecom. Each grouping is derived from the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code that the company itself reports on its filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — a public code recorded on the SEC's EDGAR system.

These sector groupings are Tickerscape's own. They are not GICS®, ICB®, TRBC, or any other licensed classification scheme, no licensed classification product was used to build them, and they are not endorsed by or affiliated with the organizations that publish those schemes. They will disagree with those schemes on many companies, because they follow the SEC's own SIC hierarchy rather than an index provider's. To take a visible example: SIC files The Walt Disney Company under amusement and recreation services, so it lands in Retail, Cars & Leisure here, where a reader used to an index provider's taxonomy might expect a media category.

Two further limits are worth knowing. A company reports one SIC code, so a diversified business is placed by its primary reported activity and nothing else — a conglomerate sits in a single bucket. And some filers, including many business-development companies, have no SIC code on record at all; for those we show no sector rather than guessing one. If a company looks misplaced to you, the Feedback page is the right place to say so — the groupings are stored as editable data precisely so they can be corrected.

Location freshness

A headquarters address reaches us when the company files it, so the dataset moves at the speed of SEC filings rather than at the speed of the market. A company that relocates keeps its old address here until its next periodic filing reports the new one, and the pin is not re-checked until that filing comes up for review. The companies-by-state pages carry a “Data last updated” date for the published dataset as a whole, and an individually reviewed location carries its own review date on its badge.

How the markers are drawn

Every marker on the map is currently drawn the same way — one dot, one size, one color. That is deliberate rather than unfinished: marker color, shape and size exist to encode a per-company value, and with no market data on the site there is no value to encode. Nothing about a marker's appearance carries meaning beyond “a company is headquartered here.” When the map does encode a value, this section will describe the scale and the legend will document it.

A marker can be hidden, by the info panel's per-company controls or by the toolbar's Show only Tickerscape Verified locations toggle. That is the only thing that changes what you see on the map.

Refresh cadence

The map does not poll for updates. The location dataset is loaded once when the page opens, and nothing on the page changes on a timer after that, so a tab left open makes no repeating requests. To pick up a rebuilt dataset, reload the page.

If your browser or operating system requests reduced motion, the interface's slide and fade animations are turned off, and the map's own pan and zoom glides are shortened.

For more

The Terms of Service cover the long-form investment disclaimer and what Tickerscape is and isn't (it is not investment advice, a broker-dealer, or a fiduciary). The Feedback page is the right place to report a wrong coordinate, or anything else that looks off.