Verification & AI disclosure
How we research and verify county rules
Every deadline and rule on a county page is a sourced fact: it quotes an official source word for word, and a person other than the researcher checks that quote against the source before the fact is shown. We use AI to find and extract rules; people decide what is published.
- Verified county facts needed per page
- 3
- Sibling similarity below
- 0.5
- Last updated
From source to page#
Capture the source
We keep a hashed copy of each source as captured.
AI extracts the rule, with its quote
AI reads the captured sources and proposes each rule together with the exact sentence that supports it.
Software checks the quote
Software then rejects any quote that doesn’t appear word for word in the source.
A second person verifies
A trained research analyst who did not research the fact checks the quote against the source.
Another reviewer checks legal questions
Legal-judgment questions — such as whether a value can go up or what evidence a board accepts — also need sign-off from an additional reviewer.
Publish
- T0 · In research Open to anyone who follows a link, but kept out of search results and our sitemap.
- T1 · Verified Meets every condition under “When does a county page appear in search results?”, so it can appear in search results.
- T2 · Double-checked As T1, and every critical fact also checked by a second reviewer.
01Sources
Where do the facts come from?#
From statutes and official county and state publications first — notices, forms, calendars and rules — ranked by authority. A secondary source never outranks an official one.
| Rank | Source type |
|---|---|
| 1 | Statute or regulation |
| 2 | Official notice, form, calendar or rules |
| 3 | Official guide or FAQ |
| 4 | Official press release |
| 5 | Phone or email with the office (logged) |
| 6 | Secondary source |
We keep a hashed copy of each source as captured. When an official site can’t be read automatically, a person captures it by hand and records how.
02AI disclosure
How is AI used — and how isn't it?#
AI reads the captured sources and proposes each rule together with the exact sentence that supports it. Software then rejects any quote that doesn't appear word for word in the source. Nothing an AI proposes is shown publicly until a person verifies it.
- AI never chooses comparable homes, computes values or savings, or writes numbers or conclusions in reports.
- Plain-language explanations are written once per state and published only after a human editor approves them.
- Each county page says “Researched with AI, verified by” the role of the person who checked it.
03People
Who verifies a fact?#
A trained research analyst who did not research the fact checks the quote against the source. Legal-judgment questions — such as whether a value can go up or what evidence a board accepts — also need sign-off from an additional reviewer.
Automatic checks run first: dates must parse, weekday labels must match their dates, rules are replayed against past calendars, and county rules are compared with the state template. Disagreements go to a review queue and the page stays unverified until they are resolved.
04Freshness
What do “Last updated” and “Last checked” mean?#
“Last updated” is the latest date a verified fact on the page changed. “Last checked” is the latest date its sources were captured or re-read. Re-checking a source without finding changes never moves “Last updated”.
Each fact has a review date. Sources are monitored more often as a filing window approaches, and our team re-checks every fact about an upcoming deadline before its review date. When a deadline passes, the page shows last season’s dates and the next expected deadline until the county announces the new one. Deadline reminders are only sent for windows that were recently confirmed.
05Search engines
When does a county page appear in search results?#
Only when a person has checked the facts that answer the main local questions: the next deadline (or, before it is announced, last season's dates or our forecast), where and how to file, and how to reach the office. The page must also pass the checks below.
- At least 3 checked facts that are specific to the county. A rule that is the same in every county of a state is stated once, on the state page, and each county page links to it.
- No two checked sources disagree.
- Topics we have not checked yet are listed on the page as “not confirmed yet”, with the office to ask. We do not guess.
- Less than 50% of its wording matches any other county page in the same state, compared in 5-word runs after the shared page template is removed.
- Every date and number traces to a checked source record, and no text promises an outcome.
Pages that pass are released to search engines in weekly batches. A page that does not pass yet can still be opened from a link, but it stays out of search results and out of our sitemap. Pages for counties we have not researched yet show Census figures, not rules, and also stay out of search results.
06Corrections
What if a fact is wrong?#
A wrong deadline is treated as our most severe kind of incident. Reported errors are triaged within a day during filing season, and the fact is pulled from the page while it is re-checked.
Always confirm the deadline printed on your own notice. See also our methodology and disclaimers.