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Needham has received Google’s 2014 e-City award for Massachusetts, recognizing the town’s high concentration of businesses with an online presence.
The award, announced in mid-October, came as Needham officials were preparing to welcome TripAdvisor, which will be leaving Kendall Square in Cambridge for more spacious headquarters on Route 128 sometime next year.
TripAdvisor, which generated close to $1 billion in revenue in 2013, is known for its customers’ extensive ratings of hotels and other travel services. The Needham location is expected to employ roughly 1,000 people.
Needham and Newton, which share a Chamber of Commerce, have been working together to attract young companies that are outgrowing their space in Boston and Cambridge, according to Needham Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick. About 500 acres located along Route 128 in both communities is known as the N2 Innovation Corridor.
“We’re doing regional planning for siting of economic development in that corridor, extolling the benefits of it, and touting it as an innovation district, particularly with respect to high-tech,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce, which has already raised about $38,000 from local businesses, is seeking $50,000 from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to promote development in the district.
In recent years, Needham also has tweaked its zoning regulations to allow greater height and density, Fitzpatrick said.
The criteria for the Google award were developed by Ipsos, a market-research company. Google applied a formula that divided each community’s population by the number of Google “Adwords” – ad listings that are generated based on the topic of the Google search. In each state, Ipsos issued a list of the five municipalities where the use of AdWords was highest.
Each of the finalists was judged on the vibrancy of its business community’s online presence. A city or town’s score increases based on the number of companies that have a website, social media presence, blog, and other Internet-related venues.
In 2013, the eCity award for Massachusetts went to Westborough.