Data Sources and Methodology
Sources
- Contractor License Data – General (registration, status, expiry, specialty, city)
- Contractor Bond data (surety, amount, effective date; cancelled bonds excluded)
- Contractor Insurance data (insurer, amount, expiry; cancelled or expired policies excluded)
All three are published by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries on data.wa.gov under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL). We are not affiliated with L&I or any government.
Refresh Schedule
We download the three files daily, rebuild the city lists and lookup index, and publish changes. Each page shows the date of the data it uses.
How Trades Are Assigned
From the license type and the first two specialty codes, in this order: electrical license type → electricians; plumbing → plumbers; roofing → roofers; HVAC/heating → HVAC; painting → painters; general → general contractors; landscaping → landscapers; concrete → concrete contractors.
City Lists
A city list includes ACTIVE registrations with that city in the business address. We launched with the 200 trade-and-city combinations that have the most active registrations (each has at least 49), and add smaller cities in stages.
Profiles and Indexing
Every business in a city list has a profile. Profiles are open to search engines when the record is data-complete (bond on file plus insurance, or an electrical license), does not expire within 60 days, and belongs to a specialty trade or a general-contractor market with 300 or fewer active registrations. Others are kept out of search results ("noindex") but remain available to visitors.
What We Leave Out
Principal or owner names, phone numbers and street addresses are not shown. Anyone can ask for a correction or removal on our correction or removal request page.