About GovDir

GovDir answers one question: where do I go to find this?

Food assistance, health coverage, unemployment, housing help, senior and veterans services, property records, taxes, deeds, zoning, permits, maps. The answer usually lives with a county office, a state agency, or a federal program. GovDir figures out which one, explains what it is in plain English, and sends you there.

Who runs it

GovDir is an independent, free guide. It is not a government agency and does not speak for any county, city, or state. It sells no listings, and no office pays to appear or to rank higher.

Its sister site GISFinder covers only maps and land data: county GIS maps, parcel viewers, aerial photos, flood and wetland maps, and GIS downloads. Both use the same checked directory.

How it works

• Type a question, an address, a parcel number, a county, a city, or the name of a map.
• GovDir works out the place and the topic, then shows the best resource first and other options underneath.
• For an address, the property page pulls together public data such as wetlands, flood zones, elevation, and soil, and links the official county records and maps.
• Ask about a property in your own words. The answer is built from those facts and always tells you which source it used.

Where the links come from

• Every place page starts from the official government websites for that county, city, or town. A link marked Official is run by the government that keeps the records.
• An automated check opens every listed link and office website about once a week and tries a failed page again the next day. Verified and the date beside a link show when the page last opened normally, either in that check or, for sites that turn automated visitors away, in a real browser. A later check that is turned away or gets no answer does not remove it.
• Not yet verified means the check has not confirmed the page yet. Some county sites block automated visitors but open normally in a browser, so they can stay unconfirmed even when they work.
• The check names itself GovDir-LinkChecker and links back to this page. It does not pretend to be a web browser. Sites that turn it away are checked by opening them in a real browser instead.
• A separate uptime check, named GovDir-UptimeCheck, asks each website for its home page once every 10 to 60 minutes depending on its size, and checks less often when a site asks it to slow down.
• A link that returns "not found" or keeps failing its check is marked as possibly broken and is no longer offered as a recommendation.

How page text is written

• Descriptions of county maps, tax searches and record searches are written from what that official page says. Automated tools and AI models help read the official pages, and a line is kept only when the words it rests on appear on the page itself. A What to know list ends with the date the page was read.
• GovDir does not add fees, office hours, deadlines or instructions that the official source does not state. When it has no confirmed contact or answer for a place, the page says so instead of guessing.
• An officeholder's name shows only with a link to the official page that names them and the date it was checked.

How answers are written

Search and property questions use an AI language model to understand the question and choose among the resources already in the directory. It cannot invent links: every link in an answer comes from the directory, and each answer names its sources. Check anything important with the office named on the page.

What it is not

GovDir is a guide, not an authority. It never makes an official determination. For anything regulatory, the county, city, township, or state office named on the page has the final say. Screening data can be out of date or miss small features, so treat it as a starting point.

Guides

Short guides explain how to get help, such as food benefits, cash assistance, health coverage, rent help and veterans benefits, and the records behind the property links: how to find who owns land, where each state records deeds, and who assesses and collects property tax.

For developers

The directory is also available as a free API for apps and AI agents: the offices for any place, official links with their check dates, guides and point screening, with the same results for every caller. AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT can use it through the GovDir MCP server.

Maps

PublicGIS is the companion parcel map from the same team. GovDir helps you find the answer. PublicGIS shows you the map.

Coverage

The directory covers Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, United States Virgin Islands, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, with a page for every county. City pages bring together local, county, state, and federal sources. Browse coverage by state.

Privacy

• Owner names shown on a property page come from PublicGIS or the county parcel map. They are the owner of record as the county lists it, which can be a company or landlord rather than the people who live there. GovDir keeps them for no more than 24 hours, and never in its logs or backups. To stop bulk copying, each visitor sees owner names for up to 100 properties a day, counted under the visitor code that changes every day.
• Searches and property questions the directory cannot answer by itself go to TypeSafe's Jev AI, which picks the answer from GovDir's own lists. For a property question it gets the question and the names of the stored facts, never an owner name or other record values. When Jev is unsure, the question and the property facts, including an owner name, go to Anthropic's Claude, or to OpenAI's GPT through OpenRouter when Claude is unavailable. Anthropic and OpenAI may keep them for up to 30 days to check for abuse.
• Searches and property questions are kept for 90 days with a visitor code that changes every day, so the site owner can see how each one was answered and fix what went wrong. Only the site owner can see them. Phone numbers written with spaces, dashes, dots, brackets or a + country code, email addresses and card numbers are blanked out first (a search that is only ten digits in three groups, such as 612-555-0199, is kept, because it is usually a parcel number), and owner names are removed from stored answers. Daily counts without the words are kept longer. Server backups keep copies for up to about three weeks after the 90 days.
• The Recent menu shows up to 30 searches and property visits from the last 30 days, saved in this browser. Use Clear history in that menu to remove them.
• Server logs record which pages were opened, without the searches, addresses or questions typed into them. The rare error entry, written when a page is refused for too many requests or fails to load, can hold them for up to two days until a daily cleanup removes them.
• To keep automated copying of the directory down, the site sets one security cookie after your browser runs the page's script. It holds a random code and the date it was made, nothing about you, and lasts 30 days after your last visit. A browser that looks automated may first see a short "Checking your browser" page that opens the page by itself. The server logs note which check each page view got.
• Visit counts come from PeekLog, the site owner's own analytics, loaded from this site. PeekLog also gets the words of each search and property question and how GovDir answered it, and keeps those words for 90 days, plus up to about four weeks in its backups. The page addresses PeekLog records leave the typed words out. There are no advertising or third-party trackers.
• A wrong-link report keeps the page, the link, the reason and your note for up to 180 days. A code made from your network address limits abuse. The code changes every day and is erased from the report after a day.

Something wrong?

Government sites move pages often. If a link is dead, opens the wrong page, lists the wrong phone number, or a better official resource exists, report a wrong link. Every resource and place page also has a report form at the bottom.

Reports go to the person who runs GovDir. A link is replaced only after the new one has been opened and checked on the official site. For anything else, write to reports@govdir.com.