Google has named our little city the “California Digital Capital”, singling it out for its strong online business community. Google’s eCity Awards recognize the strongest online business communities in each state based on its abilities of using the web to find new customers, connecting with existing customers and fueling their local economies. The winning cities exhibited strong engagement and potential for growth within the digital economy.

Other factors include the likelihood of a small businesses having a website, whether their sites are mobile-friendly, using a blog, promoting themselves via a social network, selling goods directly from their Websites.

Google and independent research firm Ipsos MORI analyzed the online strength of local small businesses in cities in all fifty states. The city with the highest scores in each state was designated a Google “eCity”. Ipsos first developed an eCities shortlist assembled from a list of all US cities broken down by population size. Google then added the AdWords data for each city to calculate the top five cities in each of the 50 states with the highest AdWords penetration relative to population size. Ipsos then assigned a Business score to these cities by identifying a random sample of 51 small and medium businesses (employing between 1 and 50 people) in each of the top 5 AdWords penetration cities from each state. The entire Methodology can be read here.

Per Google’s description:

The City of Emeryville is located on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay. The city has a thriving business community that houses companies ranging from small retail stores to large technology firms, including many studio spaces for artists and animators.

Emeryville replaces the 2013 winner, Carlsbad, CA.
See the complete list here →