Pew Internet & American Life Project

Project for Excellence in Journalism

Where People Get Information About Restaurants and Other Local Businesses

A Closer Look

December 14, 2011

People looking for information about local restaurants and other businesses say they rely on the internet, especially search engines, ahead of any other source.

Newspapers, both printed copies and the websites of newspaper companies, run second behind the internet as the source that people rely on for news and information about local businesses, including restaurants and bars.

Finding news on restaurants, bars and other local businesses are among the most popular of 16 local topics explored in a national survey by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Pew Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The survey probed how people learn about their communities in a new way, asking about specific subjects and discovered that people use a complex range of different sources.

Read the full report for a demographic breakdown of the adults who say they go online for information about local businesses, as well as information about their favorite online sources.

See also the overview for the following report: "How People Learn About Their Local Community."