Where Our Information Comes From — and How We Verify It
Our complete sourcing framework: the six-tier hierarchy that governs every county guide, our eight-step verification workflow, our data-currency discipline, what we deliberately do not use, and our human-in-the-loop policy for any automated assistance. This is the backbone of our E-E-A-T standard. Read alongside our Editorial Policy.
What is on this page
1. Sourcing Principle
Every factual claim about a county record office — its name, official URL, record-search tool, GIS viewer, address, phone, and search process — traces to the county office’s own official .gov site. We do not build guide entries from auto-scraped aggregators or third-party people-search sites.
If a piece of information is not confirmed on the county office’s own official .gov page (or, for legal context, the state statute or open-records law), it does not get published as fact. And we never publish an individual property’s value, ownership, lien, or tax status — that lives only on the county’s live record.
2. The Six-Tier Source Hierarchy
When sources differ, the higher tier governs.
The county office’s official .gov site
The primary source for the assessor, recorder/register of deeds, tax collector/treasurer, and GIS office — office name, official URL, address, phone, and the record-search tool.
The county’s official record-search tool
The authoritative live source for a specific record — assessed value, recorded deed, lien, parcel boundary, or tax status. We link to it; we never cache it.
State statute & open-records law
The state public-records act and property statutes governing what is public, what is restricted, the fees, and how to request certified copies.
State assessment & revenue oversight
State departments of revenue or taxation and the bodies that oversee assessment practice and equalization — for how assessment and appeal processes work.
Federal frameworks
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. §1681) for use limits; the Federal Trade Commission; and federal public-domain materials.
Professional standards
Recognized appraisal and land-recording standards for context only — never as a substitute for the county’s own record.
3. The Eight-Step Verification Workflow
Every county guide passes through these steps before publication and at each quarterly review:
- Locate the county office’s official .gov site. Confirm it is the genuine office — not an aggregator or lead-gen page.
- Click every URL. A human editor confirms the office page, the record-search tool, and the GIS viewer all load.
- Test the search tool to confirm it reaches the live county system.
- Cross-check the office address against the official .gov contact page.
- Confirm the search process (by address, owner, parcel number) against the office’s current procedure.
- Check fees & copy procedures for certified copies where relevant.
- Dial-test the office phone on a quarterly cycle — confirming the line answers and routes correctly.
- Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including the “not a county office” notice and the FCRA “not a CRA” statement, then stamps the “last reviewed” date.
4. Data-Currency Discipline
An assessed value, a recorded lien, or a tax-paid status can change at any time. Publishing a cached figure would mislead. So we do not publish any individual property’s value, ownership, lien, or tax status — we publish and verify the official county search tool so readers get the live record. What we verify and re-verify is the county’s own infrastructure: the search-tool URL, the GIS viewer, the office phone, and the process.
5. What We Deliberately Do Not Use
- Auto-scraped data feeds — they drift out of date and cannot be verified to a primary source
- Third-party people-search sites as a source of property data
- Lead-generation pages that imitate official county sites
- Unverified review sites as a source of factual office data
- Social-media posts as a primary source
- Cached values or statuses of individual properties — we link to the live county tool instead
6. When Sources Conflict
If two sources disagree, the higher tier governs — the county office’s own .gov page and live record-search tool beat everything else. Where we cannot resolve a conflict, we say what is uncertain rather than present a guess as fact, and we direct readers to confirm on the county’s official source.
7. Human-in-the-Loop AI Policy
We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. No editorial fact, URL, search-tool link, telephone number, office address, or process detail on uspropertysearch.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the county office's own official .gov page. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish office entries, and we never publish an individual property’s value, ownership, lien, or tax status. This human-in-the-loop standard is central to our E-E-A-T commitment.
8. Children — COPPA
The site is intended for adults researching property and is not directed at children under 13. Consistent with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. See our Privacy Policy for detail.
9. Update Cadence
- Quarterly — full re-verification of every county office’s URLs, search tool, GIS viewer, address, process, and phone (dial-test)
- Within 48 hours — broken search-tool links, dead phone numbers, and changed record portals reported by readers
- Within 7 business days — other reader-reported corrections
- On change — when a county moves a tool or reorganizes an office, we update and re-date the page
10. Contact
Questions about our sourcing, or a correction to a source? Email info@uspropertysearch.org with the subject “Sources query” — include the page URL and, for portal-change reports, the new official .gov URL.
Found Something That Needs Updating?
Email info@uspropertysearch.org with the page URL and the official .gov source link. Broken tools and changed portals are fixed within 48 hours.
📧 info@uspropertysearch.org