Data & methodology
Where every PestPin record comes from
PestPin is built on public records. Every company listing traces to a state regulator's pesticide or pest-control license roster, and every profile links its source. This page documents exactly which sources feed the directory, how often we process them, the rules we apply, and what we add beyond the raw rosters.
The rules we apply
- Official sources only. Records come from state regulator rosters and lookups, never from scraped review sites or self-submitted lists. A company cannot pay to be added to or removed from the directory, or to change its license record, its rating, or a review. Optional placement, when offered, is always clearly labeled Sponsored.
- Consumer-service classification. State rosters mix exterminators with lawn, agricultural, and government applicators. Where a state puts category codes on the license we classify from those codes. Where it does not, and several states do not, we use the scope of the roster itself and explicit signals in the business name, which is weaker evidence and we do not pretend otherwise. Records we cannot confirm as consumer pest-control work are excluded from the public directory rather than guessed at.
- Processing dates on every profile. Each profile shows when we processed its record. States marked "official snapshot" below are processed from an official file we obtained on the date shown, either published by the regulator or released to us under a public-records request, and reprocessed on our recurring schedule; that is not a same-day regulator check, and we never describe it as one.
- Fail-safe refreshes. Sources are reprocessed on a recurring schedule, fetched from the regulator itself where the source allows it. A failed or suspicious pull never removes a state's existing records; every run is logged with row counts and a content fingerprint so silent data loss cannot happen. Rather than ask you to take the schedule on trust, here is the observed result: the most recent check of any state's records was on , covering 32 states. Each state comes from its own source, so the rest were checked earlier; every state page and city page shows the date for that state. If a date looks old, nothing has run since then, and the official source we link for every record is the current answer.
- What a match does not mean. A license-record match is not an endorsement, an insurance check, a service-area guarantee, or proof of current status. Regulator publication timing varies; the official source always has the current answer. Details on how we check records.
- Where a state publishes insurance, we show it. A few states require a business to keep a liability-insurance certificate on file and publish the date it runs to. Texas is the one we carry today. On those listings we print that date exactly as the regulator holds it. We did not check the policy, see it, or confirm any coverage amount, and the date can lag a renewal or a cancellation, so ask the company for a current certificate before you hire. We show the date only while it is still ahead; a past one is not evidence a company is uninsured, so we say nothing rather than imply it.
- What “licensed since” counts. Some states publish the date they first licensed a business alongside its latest renewal. Where they do, we show that year. It is how long the state has licensed the company, which is not the same as how long the company has existed, and we do not guess at a founding date. Where a state stamped every older record with one migration date, we show nothing rather than a year that is really a database artifact.
- Reviews cannot be bought. Only people whose request a company accepted receive a review invitation, and every submission is moderated before publication. Paying never changes a rating, and there is no pay-to-rank.
The 33 state sources
"Live source" states are re-fetched from the regulator itself each time we process them. "Official snapshot" states are processed from an official file we obtained on the date shown, either published by the regulator or released to us under a public-records request, and reprocessing that file does not make it any newer.
What we add beyond the rosters
The rosters are public; the work is making them usable. PestPin unifies 33 incompatible state formats into one search, decodes the category codes into plain English for the states that publish them, links every record to its source, computes per-city coverage from the records themselves, and connects homeowners to a listed company through a request that goes to one company at a time and is never resold. The aggregate dataset also powers our licensing report and cost report, including a machine-readable download.
Found an error in a record? Use the correction form and we will review it against the official source.