How Roocation handles evidence

This page explains how Roocation reports are built, what the numbers mean, and — just as importantly — where their limits are. Roocation is Australia-first location intelligence for business locations: it reads the external conditions around an address, whether that address is a new site you are considering or a current location you already operate. It never assesses a business's own sales, costs, staff or performance.

Methodology status: this is a pre-launch methodology draft, last reviewed 19 July 2026. Some behaviours described here depend on production infrastructure and data providers that are still being confirmed; those points are flagged in-copy as pending production verification.

What Roocation analyses

A Roocation report describes the market around a business address — never the business inside it. The same evidence inputs and the same formula are used whether you are evaluating a proposed site or reviewing a location you already trade from.

Six scored categories are combined into a single 0–100 Opportunity Score, weighted for the selected business type: demand, demographics, catchment, access, reviews and competition. Every full report is organised into nine sections — Overview, Location Context, Competition, Demand & Gaps, Demographics, Catchment, Access & Transport, Reviews and Report Summary — structured the same way every time.

A Free Preview returns a three-level status — Promising, Mixed or Highly Competitive — plus the headline signals behind it. The exact 0–100 Opportunity Score and the full nine sections are reserved for paid reports. You can see a complete example before you buy, read plain-language definitions in the glossary, or review pricing.

How current-location analysis is interpreted

The same formula and evidence inputs are used for both analysis contexts. For a current business location, the report describes the external conditions around the address — it never assesses the business itself.

Change-over-time wording appears only where comparable time-series evidence supports it; otherwise findings are stated as "currently observed". Where the operating business can be reliably identified, it is excluded from competitor counts; where identification is uncertain, the possible self-inclusion is disclosed and the confidence label is reduced accordingly.

Benchmarks state their geography, cohort, as-of date, sample or coverage, source and limitations. Operator knowledge and on-site verification remain essential to any decision.

How a report is built

Reports organise recognised public data into labelled findings, then combine those findings into the scored categories. You can walk through the flow on the process page; the building blocks are below.

Core public data-source categories

Reports draw on public data grouped into six categories. Each is labelled wherever it appears in a report:

• Public business listings — competitor identities, categories, opening hours and listed amenities such as parking, plus places and nearby-business context around the address.
• Census demographics — population, age, income, household composition and tenure, from the ABS 2021 Census (the source year is shown in each report).
• Public search-interest signals — relative demand indexes and approximate public search volumes by area.
• Publicly available reviews — ratings, review counts and recurring themes among nearby businesses.
• Transit, routing and accessibility data — stops, routes and practical-reach indicators around the address, including the mapping and geocoding used to place and measure it.
• State and local public datasets — relevant public datasets used where available for a location.

Source-labelled data carries clear dates, coverage and limitations. In production, every figure in a report is intended to link back to where it came from, with provider-required attribution shown next to the relevant data — a production requirement, not yet a live guarantee while providers are being confirmed. Data providers are sources, not partners or endorsers; attribution is not a partnership.

Source data, calculated values and derived signals

Every finding is labelled by type, so you can see how far it sits from the raw record:

• Source data is shown as published, read directly from the provider.
• Calculated values — counts, averages and distances — are computed directly from source data.
• Derived signals — the Opportunity Score, demand indexes and strength indicators — combine multiple inputs through Roocation's methodology and are always labelled as derived.

The Opportunity Score, at a high level

The 0–100 Opportunity Score combines six category indicators — demand, demographics, catchment, access, reviews and competition — weighted for the selected business type. It is designed for comparing locations on identical evidence, and is meant to be read in bands rather than as a single point.

Roocation keeps anti-gaming thresholds and low-level implementation internal, but publishes what materially changed a score and where the evidence is weak. What each section contributes to the score is always visible in the report. Plain-language definitions are in the glossary.

Direct vs adjacent competitors

Competition is split before it is scored. Direct competitors — substantially the same offer, occasion and price band — weigh the score down. Adjacent businesses, which compete for the same spend without selling the same thing, are read partly as footfall and demand evidence. This split is why a busier address can outscore a quieter one.

Data confidence

Every finding carries a Data Confidence label describing the strength of the evidence behind it — sample size, vintage, coverage, and how directly the signal measures what it stands for. The levels are High, Moderate, Limited evidence and Not enough evidence. Confidence describes the evidence, never the recommendation: high-confidence unwelcome findings exist, and so do low-confidence encouraging ones.

Data freshness

Each report shows its generation date. Demographic data carries its source year — currently the 2021 Census, which should be read as a floor in fast-growing areas, where the real population and household counts may already be higher. Business and review data reflect public listings at generation time; search-interest signals are relative and periodically updated.

Limits and responsibilities

Coverage and its limits

Coverage is checked before a paid report is generated. If a location cannot be analysed reliably, no payment is taken and you can join a waitlist for that address instead. You can check an address on the coverage page.

Public listings do not capture every operator — informal, unlisted or very new businesses may be missing, and listing quality varies by area. Review samples depend on public coverage and may not be representative. Reports state where coverage is thin instead of papering over it.

What the platform cannot determine

Reports do not measure actual store visits, revenue or conversion. They do not know your rent, lease terms, fit-out condition or operating costs. They cannot assess your execution, brand or offer quality — the factors that decide the ceiling of any business.

Why on-site validation is required

Every dataset describes the past from a distance. The footpath at your trading hour — the morning flow, the parking reality, the vacancy three doors down — contains information no public dataset holds. Reports are built to direct that visit, not to replace it.

Why lease and financial checks stay separate

Deliberately. The score describes the market around an address; whether the deal on that address is any good — rent, term, incentives, make-good, working capital — is a separate analysis with different inputs. Roocation excludes rent, lease terms and fit-out costs on purpose: combining them would hide which half of a decision is weak.

Due diligence

Reports organise publicly available data to support location evaluation. They do not replace legal, financial, property, planning or operational due diligence, and on-site validation and professional advice remain your responsibility.

Source register

This register records the exact production provider, dataset, geography, source period, refresh cadence, known limits, official link and licence note for each category. Providers are named only once approved — nothing below is a live source yet, and every production provider remains to be confirmed. The labels shown today are for demonstration only:

• Business listings — provider to be confirmed before production · Australia · captured at generation · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.
• Demographics — provider and dataset to be confirmed before production · Australia · census vintage shown per report · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.
• Search interest — provider to be confirmed before production · Australia · trailing window · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.
• Reviews — provider to be confirmed before production · Australia · captured at generation · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.
• Transit & routing — provider to be confirmed before production · Australia · captured at generation · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.
• Mapping & geocoding — provider to be confirmed before production · Australia · captured at generation · cadence TBC · demonstration source label.

Because providers are still being confirmed, no commercial data source is named on this page or in reports yet; the source labels shown today are demonstration labels, not endorsements.

Report a data or methodology issue

See a wrong pin, a closed business, a category mismatch, or a source issue? Send the report ID and the item you want checked through Contact → Data correction, or email hello@roocation.com with the report ID. We review submitted corrections; a request does not automatically overwrite source data or a score.

How this compares with researching a location yourself

Site visits, Google and Maps, general-purpose AI and enterprise platforms each have a legitimate role in a location decision — the methodology above is how Roocation does a different job: bringing scattered signals into one consistent, source-labelled framework. For an honest comparison of the options, see what makes Roocation different.