Transparency
Methodology
How we collect, link, and present contractor license evidence from official public records. We publish this so anyone can challenge our rules — and so we stay accountable to high-confidence standards. For a short map of which states are live, see where we have coverage.
1. License evidence
We load official board extracts for each live state (for example, Florida DBPR Construction Industry bulk files for licenses and discipline). We keep the published license id when the board publishes one (e.g. CBC015082). Rows without a real consumer-facing license id are not shown as full Trust Reports. Incomplete shells are kept out of search so you do not get empty fake profiles.
Source: Florida DBPR — Construction Industry Licensing Board
2. Entity evidence
Where we auto-link business filings (notably Florida Sunbiz / Division of Corporations), bulk corporate files supply entity status, document numbers, formation dates, and officers when the match rules pass. Other states may show entity data only when a high-confidence link exists — we do not invent company filings.
3. Linking standard (high confidence only)
Contractor ↔ entity links use exact matching only where we support auto-linking. We show an entity status on search results and Trust Reports only when the match is high-confidence (we require a strong exact match — roughly 90%+ confidence on our internal scale). Examples of strong matches:
- Exact normalized name + address + ZIP
- Exact normalized name + ZIP
- Exact normalized name + city
Ambiguous ties (two different company records at the same top confidence) produce no link. We prefer no profile over a wrong one. Name search for consumers is more forgiving (e.g. ignoring “LLC”); entity linking is not.
4. Discipline
Board discipline extracts are linked when they attach to the contractor or license in our load. “None linked in extract” means none in our current files — not a legal warranty of a clean history.
5. Freshness (“last verified”)
Each loaded record carries source provenance and a last-verified timestamp from our ingest batch. That timestamp means “present in our successful load at this time,” not “checked live at page view.” Board systems remain the authority for real-time status.
6. What we do not do
- Fuzzy name matching or “close enough” entity merges
- Paid rankings, featured placements, or lead generation forms
- Invented licenses, fabricated IDs, or thin filler profiles for SEO
- Trust Scores that pretend to be a single “hire / don’t hire” number
7. Corrections
If our presentation or linking is wrong, use Request a correction. We review against official sources.