Where are Los Angeles online retailers registered?

Steps

1. The City's Socrata API, counted by ZIP for the three core codes: SELECT zip_code, count(*) AS n WHERE naics in ('454111','454112','454113') GROUP BY zip_code (ZIP+4 values folded to the first 5 digits locally, since SoQL here has no substring function). in_city = rows with council_district other than '0', counted locally from the row download.
2. 454111 Electronic shopping, 454112 Electronic auctions and 454113 Mail-order houses are 2007 NAICS codes. 2012 NAICS kept them. 2017 NAICS merged all three into 454110 (Electronic Shopping and Mail-Order Houses), a code this dataset does not use (0 rows).
3. The core count is a legacy classification that the City still assigns, so it undercounts online sellers and its trend by start year mixes real change with which codes registrants were given. Do not read core_by_start_year as growth of online selling.
4. In-city means a council district of 1 to 15, the dataset's own definition; the 478 rows with district 0 stay in the all-registrations count only.

631,925 rows in the dataset; 1,951 core registrations; 1,947 mapped to a ZIP centroid. Every derived figure on this page (changes, indexes, averages, counts) is computed from the published rows, and the table under each chart says how.

Checks

• The API's by-ZIP counts equal a local count of the 1951 individually downloaded core rows for every ZIP (no duplicate location_account values, no row with an end date). Per-code counts sum to the total.
• Verified against the Census concordance workbooks: the three core codes map only to 454110 in 2017 NAICS (and 454110 draws only from them); 454110 maps to 42 2022 codes across groups 441, 444, 445, 449, 455, 456, 458, 459; none start with 4541.
• A fresh re-run reproduces the stored counts exactly; six ZIPs re-queried live matched on counts, in-city counts and coordinates.
• Reviewer decision (Oct 7): the site uses in_city (1,473) as the headline count.

Caveats

• These are business registrations with the City of Los Angeles Office of Finance (business tax accounts), not sales, revenue or web traffic. The City registers businesses that operate in the city, including some whose location is elsewhere, so `count` includes registrations whose location is outside the city; `in_city` counts only those with a City council district (1 to 15). 'Active' means the owner has not told the Office of Finance the business ceased. A business is counted under the one self-reported primary NAICS code it registered, so many online sellers are registered under other retail or service codes and are not counted here; a registration under 'Electronic shopping' does not prove online sales. The dataset mixes old and 2022 NAICS codes (see naics_vintage). Home-based sellers are counted at their registered location ZIP. ZIP centroids are Census ZCTA internal points (ZCTAs approximate ZIP codes, and some ZIPs, such as PO box or single-building ZIPs, have no ZCTA). A ZIP can extend past the city boundary, so a ZIP count may include only the City of LA part. Public data, not my business.
• 2327 rows carry a 2022-only code (a 455 to 459 code or 445132); their start dates go back to 1994-08-10, so the City has recoded some existing accounts as well as coding new ones. A business registered with a 2022 code cannot be identified as online, so it is not in the core count.

Releases and revisions

• Dataset rows last updated 2026-09-15 (monthly refresh, next update expected mid October 2026).