Sources & Methodology

1. Source Philosophy

An information site about US business records lives or dies on its sources. The records exist on government servers, the rules live in statute and agency guidance, and the search interfaces are run by state and federal IT departments. Anyone can scrape, repackage, and republish the data — and many sites do, often badly. Our position is the opposite: we point readers at the source, document how to use it, and stay out of the way.

Three principles drive every source we pick.

• Government first. The agency that owns the record is the authoritative source for that record. We do not substitute commercial aggregators where a government source is available.
• Stable URLs. We prefer durable .gov URLs that survive agency redesigns. Where an agency has historically rebuilt a portal under a new vendor, we monitor closely and update on every change.
• Transparency. Every source we use is named publicly so a reader can audit our work. The list below is the working bibliography for the entire Site.

2. Source Hierarchy

When two sources disagree, the higher-priority source wins. The hierarchy below tells you, in order, what we treat as authoritative.

3. State Business Registries

Every US state — plus the District of Columbia and the territories — operates its own business entity registry. The starting point for finding the right state agency is the umbrella resources below.

3.1 Coverage

Our guides cover entity searches for the jurisdictions below. Each is researched against that jurisdiction’s official Secretary of State, Department of State, or Corporations Division portal. Direct links to each portal are inside the relevant guide.

3.2 Why we link to each state directly

Each state’s portal has its own search syntax, name-matching rules, and entity types. The “good standing” status field in Texas does not behave the same as Delaware’s “current” indicator, which does not behave the same as California’s “active” status. The only way to give a reader an answer that is correct in their state is to send them to that state’s portal and walk them through it. Aggregators flatten these distinctions and produce wrong answers. We do not.

4. Federal Agency Sources

Several federal agencies maintain authoritative records that are referenced across our guides.

5. Intellectual Property Sources

Federal intellectual property records — trademarks, patents, and copyright registrations — are maintained by the agencies below. State trademark registries also exist but are jurisdiction-specific.

6. Court & Litigation Sources

7. Statutes, Regulations & Reference

8. Professional Authority

Recognized professional bodies provide context, interpretive guidance, and best-practice standards for their respective fields. Their materials are used to enrich our explanations, never to override what statute or the relevant agency says.

9. Sources We Do Not Use

Just as important as the sources we do rely on is the list of sources we deliberately reject. Where you see another business-records site citing a source from this list as authoritative, that should weigh against trusting their analysis.

This means specifically:

• Aggregator sites that copy state corporate records do not replace the state’s own portal in our guides.
• “Best LLC service” affiliate-driven review sites are not used as a source for any factual claim about state filing requirements.
• People-search and background-check sites are not referenced as a source for entity records.
• Outdated agency archive pages are not used where the current agency page is available.
• AI-generated text without an underlying primary-source citation is not used as a source for any claim.

10. Verification Methodology

Every guide on the Site passes through a defined verification sequence before publication, and the same sequence is repeated in compressed form on every scheduled review.

• The relevant agency, statute, or registry is identified and the URL captured in our internal source log.
• For any guide describing a search procedure, the search is tested live against the agency portal using a known-good test query.
• Filing fees, processing times, statutory thresholds, agency contacts, and form names are extracted directly from the official source.
• Statutory points are cross-checked against at least one independent reference — typically Cornell LII, the agency’s published guidance, or a recognized professional body’s interpretation.
• Where primary and secondary sources disagree, we either contact the agency directly or note both versions in the guide so the reader can decide.
• Every external link is opened and confirmed to load to the intended destination before publication.
• An editor reads the full guide for clarity, completeness, and tone before publication, looking specifically for any claim that is not backed by a documented source.
• Guides are reviewed on the schedule documented in section 12.

If a fact cannot be verified, we do not publish it. If a guide describes a process that turns out not to match what the agency portal actually does, we either rewrite the guide or pull it down.

11. Citation Standards

Citations on the Site are designed to be useful, not decorative. Three rules govern them.

Link to the primary source. When we mention a statute, regulation, agency policy, or filing form, the link goes to the agency’s own page or to a recognized authoritative reference (Cornell LII, govinfo.gov). We do not link to a paraphrase when we can link to the original.

Cite specific URLs, not domains. “Visit the SEC website” is not a citation. “Visit the SEC’s company search at sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch” is. Specific deep links survive better than they get credit for, and they save the reader the time of hunting for the right page.

Show the reader where to verify. Citations are written so a skeptical reader can confirm the claim independently in under thirty seconds. If a citation requires the reader to wade through a multi-page agency portal to find the underlying fact, the citation is rewritten.

12. Update Cycles

Different categories of information change at different paces. Our review cycle is built around how quickly each kind of information typically goes stale.

13. By the Numbers