Introducing Niche Local: A New Guide to U.S. Neighborhoods

PITTSBURGH, April 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Niche (http://niche.com), one of the leading content providers on K-12 schools and colleges, today announced the public beta of Niche Local (http://local.niche.com), a new way for people to explore cities, towns and neighborhoods. When using Niche Local, users can search the attributes of over 100,000 places and evaluate nearby schools or compare similar cities.

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"Over the past 12 years, we have helped millions of people choose where to go to school," said Luke Skurman, Founder and CEO of Niche. "By expanding our successful content model to every place in the U.S., we're making choosing where to live, visit, or raise a family a more transparent and informed process."

Deciding where to live is one of life's biggest decisions. And yet, with more than 3,000 counties, 50,000 towns, and 12,000 neighborhoods in the United States, narrowing down the options and finding valuable advice from local experts is more difficult than ever before. Niche Local allows users to immerse themselves in rich data and make more informed decisions about where they want to live.

The public beta product incorporates city, town and neighborhood data provided by the Census and additional sources.* In the coming months, Niche Local will gather and layer in user-generated reviews of livability, cost of living, safety, and many other factors in a soon-to-be-released survey to give places overall rankings and provide the unique insight from everyday experts the brand is known for.

"Major life decisions are based on multiple factors, and location is at the heart of many of those decisions. When evaluating our current coverage, it was clear that insight on locations would be a natural progression and offer a more holistic experience for our users," according to David Rush, Product Manager for Niche. "We want users to know they can come to us to make important life decisions and understand the possibilities of where that decision can take them."

In addition to places, Niche has coverage on over 130,000 K-12 schools and colleges.

For more information on public beta Niche Local, please visit:

Niche Local: http://local.niche.com

Niche Company Blog: http://blog.niche.com

*Additional sources to United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-year estimate include FBI Uniformed Crime Reports 2012, and NOAA 1981-2010 Climate Normals 2010.

About Niche

Niche is transforming the way people make big life decisions. By providing insight and analysis from everyday experts, we make choosing a college, K-12 school, or place to live a more transparent process. From our founding in 2002 as College Prowler to our coverage on over 250,000 schools and places, Niche's rapidly expanding presence continues to empower users to find their niche and thrive within it. For further information, visit http://niche.com.

SOURCE Niche