Effective August 5, 2026
Contractor directory data policy
The directory aims for measurable coverage, not an unsupported promise that every contractor is included.
Where records come from
Private candidates may come from reusable Overture Maps Places releases, official geography and business registers, first-party contractor websites, and contractor submissions. We do not seed the independent database from Google Places, Yelp, Angi, or another source that forbids this storage and reuse.
Every imported fact retains source URL, source licence, import version, retrieval date, confidence where supplied, and field-level provenance. An Overture candidate is not public merely because its confidence is at least 0.80.
What becomes public
A location is eligible only after its first-party site or business phone is checked, or an owner claim is approved. The evidence must explicitly show water extraction or water-damage restoration. Plumbers, mold-only providers, carpet cleaners, and general contractors are excluded unless that service is explicit.
Labels state the check performed: Sourced listing, Claimed by business, Credentials checked — date, Information needs rechecking, or Suspended. These labels are not rankings or endorsements. Payment cannot change them.
Canonical locations and city pages
Each business location has one canonical profile. Declared and checked service areas may reference it from several city searches without duplicating the profile. A city page remains noindex until it has at least 10 current businesses, three claimed profiles, 80% checked contactability, distinct local guidance, and no unresolved accuracy or privacy incident.
Refresh, correction, dispute, and opt-out
Overture releases are reviewed monthly, first-party websites at least every 90 days, and credentials before expiry. Visitors can report missing or incorrect information from directory pages. Owners can claim, manage multiple locations, submit moderated changes, dispute ownership, merge duplicates, revoke access, or opt out completely.
Privacy and ownership disputes are prioritized for hiding within 24 hours pending review. Claim decisions target two business days. Original data, evidence references, requester, decisions, and changes remain in the audit history; unnecessary private evidence is deleted promptly as described in the privacy policy.
Responsible collection
Water Damage Source uses ordinary identified requests only on relevant first-party pages, respects robots.txt, follows conservative per-host rates, and does not use residential proxies, CAPTCHA bypassing, rotating identities, or technical evasion. A blocked source is licensed through an API or permission, manually checked where allowed, or excluded.