Other Information Services
NAICS 519: Web search portals, data processing, news syndicates, and internet publishing services in the US.
Industry at a Glance
Sector-wide aggregates across all businesses classified under NAICS 519 (2017 classification frame). For specific sub-industries within this sector, see the individual reports below.
In NAICS 2022 this is part of 513, “Publishing Industries”, which is broader.
Industry Overview
NAICS 519 covers information service providers outside publishing, broadcasting, and telecom — including web search portals, data processing hosts, news syndicates, libraries, and internet publishing platforms. Google and Internet Archive anchor opposite ends of the spectrum: one dominates search-portal and ad-serving infrastructure, while the other preserves petabytes of public-domain and archival content under a nonprofit model.
The subsector's center of gravity sits in Northern Virginia's data-center corridor (Loudoun County alone hosts more than 300 data centers) and in the cloud regions operated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Revenue flows primarily from advertising placement, subscription access fees, data processing contracts, and cloud-hosting service-level agreements. The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups web search portals and internet publishing sites here rather than under NAICS 511, a classification choice that shapes how federal labor and revenue surveys measure the platform economy.
Regulatory pressure is intensifying. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes transparency obligations on US-based platforms serving European users, and California's Delete Act (SB 362) created the first state-level data-broker registry with deletion rights. At the federal level, the FTC has pursued enforcement actions against data brokers under Section 5 unfair-practices authority. Employment skews toward software engineers, site-reliability engineers, and data analysts, with median wages well above the all-industry average according to BLS Occupational Employment data.
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Industry Trends
Web search portals are integrating retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) into results pages — Google's Search Generative Experience and Microsoft's Bing Chat now synthesize answers inline, shifting ad-placement economics and publisher referral traffic patterns unique to this subsector.
The FTC's proposed rulemaking on commercial surveillance and data-broker registration is forcing NAICS 519 firms to redesign consent-management architectures, a compliance burden that does not apply to traditional publishers or broadcasters.
Loudoun County and adjacent Northern Virginia jurisdictions have imposed new zoning and water-use restrictions on data-center construction, pushing operators like Amazon Web Services and QTS Realty to expand into Ohio, Texas, and Georgia instead.
News syndicates including the Associated Press and Reuters are licensing archival content to large-language-model developers, creating a new revenue stream that did not exist before 2023 and raising IP questions specific to syndicated wire content.
California's Delete Act (SB 362) and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (HB 4) are establishing state-level data-broker registries, increasing compliance overhead for data processing firms that aggregate consumer profiles across jurisdictions.
Available Reports
1 industry report available for purchase under Other Information Services.
Specialty Reports Available on Request
4 specialty industriesavailable on request▾
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NAICS 519? ▾
NAICS 519 classifies information service providers that fall outside publishing, broadcasting, and telecom — specifically web search portals, data processing and hosting services, news syndicates, and libraries and archives. Notably, the Census Bureau reclassified internet publishing and web search portals into 519 from NAICS 516 in the 2022 revision, making this subsector the statistical home of major platform companies.
Why are web search portals classified under NAICS 519 instead of NAICS 511? ▾
The 2022 NAICS revision moved internet publishing and web search portals from the former NAICS 516 into 519 because these businesses derive revenue primarily from advertising and data services rather than from selling published content. NAICS 511 covers traditional software publishers and periodical publishers whose core product is the content itself, whereas 519 entities monetize access, aggregation, and ad placement.
Which US regions have the highest concentration of NAICS 519 businesses? ▾
Northern Virginia — especially Loudoun County and the Ashburn corridor — hosts the world's densest cluster of data centers, driven by proximity to major internet exchange points and federal agencies. Secondary hubs include Dallas-Fort Worth, the Phoenix metro area, and Columbus, Ohio, all of which have attracted hyperscale campus buildouts from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Meta in recent years.
How does the FTC regulate data processing firms in NAICS 519? ▾
The FTC uses Section 5 unfair-practices authority to pursue enforcement actions against data brokers and processing firms that mishandle consumer data. It has also proposed a commercial surveillance rulemaking that would impose registration and transparency requirements on data aggregators. Additionally, state laws like California's Delete Act (SB 362) layer broker-registry obligations on top of federal enforcement.
What is the difference between NAICS 519 and NAICS 518? ▾
NAICS 518 covers computing infrastructure providers — companies like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace that sell raw server capacity, storage, and platform services. NAICS 519 covers the information services built on top of that infrastructure: search portals, data processing bureaus, news syndicates, and internet publishing sites. In practice, some firms like Google span both codes, but the distinction turns on whether the primary product is infrastructure or information.
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