How Our Data Is Verified
Short answer: Every shop record traces to a government register, not a review site. Counts are floor-gated, so a broken import surfaces as a failure rather than a smaller number. Every research page carries its sources and the date each was read.
The Autobody Directory is a records directory, not a review site. Every trust signal on the site traces to an official source, and this page explains exactly how, because a directory asking for your trust should show its work.
This page covers what the law requires and where our shop records come from. There is a second standard for a different kind of information: what documents show actually happened in a claim. That material concerns named private parties and can be wrong in ways a statute cannot, so the rules for it are published in our evidence standard, including the four claims we have committed never to make. It was written and published before we held a single record of that kind, which is the only point at which such a commitment means anything.
Where the data comes from
The registry is compiled from dozens of automated government and public-record pipelines, refreshed nightly:
- State repair-shop license registers: official rosters from the 11 states whose registers we ingest (California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah), including license numbers, status, and expiration dates. Eleven is not the number of states that require a licence. Fourteen do, and the two claims are different: requiring a credential and publishing a searchable register of who holds it are separate acts, and several states do the first without the second. Which states require one, with a citation for each, is set out in body shop licensing compared across all 51 jurisdictions. This page counts registers we can read; that page counts laws.
- Federal records: EPA facility registrations, OSHA inspection history, Department of Labor filings, and SBA loan records that confirm a business operates at a physical address.
- State business-entity filings: Secretary of State registrations that corroborate a shop is a registered operating business.
- Manufacturer certification programs: OEM certification locators (Tesla, BMW, Ford, Toyota, Rivian, and dozens more), checked against the manufacturer's own published list, never self-reported.
- Municipal business licenses: city permit and license rosters for shops classified under NAICS 811121 (automotive body and paint).
How verification works
Each night, an automated pipeline pulls fresh source data, matches records across sources by name and address, merges duplicates, and verifies the result before anything goes live. A shop shown as "licensed" carries a real license number from a real state register, checked within the last day, not a claim someone typed in.
Owner-provided content (warranty terms, insurers accepted, FAQs) is always labeled as owner-provided and never affects a shop's trust tier or score.
Why our counts can go down
Most directories only grow. Ours shrinks whenever the truth requires it: when we detect duplicate records, we merge them; when a source reveals a shop closed, the pin is retired. We run a dedicated de-duplication pass every night and publish the lower-but-true number. Public copy uses floored figures (like "150,000+") that are guaranteed to understate the live count, never the reverse.
The floor gate
Before any night's data is published, an automated gate checks the new counts against public minimums. If a count ever falls below what our pages claim, publication halts and a human investigates. The one failure mode a records directory cannot survive is overstating what it has, so the system is built to make that mechanically impossible.
What we don't do
- No user reviews, no star ratings, records over opinions.
- No pay-to-rank. Sponsored placements are labeled, and paid features never change a shop's trust tier.
- No invented numbers. Figures in our Registry Watch reports are produced by the same pipeline that powers the directory and mechanically cross-checked against the published dataset before release.
Point-in-time honesty
Counts move nightly by design: that is the point of a living registry. Every report carries its data date, and the current live figures are always at the source: the interactive map and the data solutions page for the B2B dataset.
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.