Where the data comes from
Each state's notary regulator publishes the commissions it has issued. We ingest six of them, unchanged.
| State | Published by |
|---|---|
| California | Secretary of State — notary public listing |
| Texas | Secretary of State |
| New York | Department of State |
| Colorado | Department of State |
| Oregon | Secretary of State |
| Delaware | Department of State |
California's is worth describing, because it is the one most people assume works differently: the state does not offer a public search for an individual notary. It publishes the whole active list as a single compressed file, refreshed daily, and anyone can download it. Checking one commission means downloading that file and searching it yourself.
That is most of the reason this directory exists. We take the file the state publishes and make one commission findable at one address.
Check a California commission by name or number
How often it updates
The California roster is re-read Tuesday through Saturday, early in the morning Pacific time — the morning after the state regenerates its file each business day. The other five states are read on their own schedules. Each listing shows the date we last read its state's file.
When a commission stops appearing in a state's file, we mark it inactive rather than deleting the page — a lapsed commission is a fact about a record, and a page that quietly vanishes answers nothing for someone holding a document that was notarised last year.
What we publish, and what we do not
We publish the fields a state publishes about a commission: the name on it, the commission number, the expiry date, the status, the city and county on file, and the business name where the roster carries one.
We never publish a street address, and never an email. California's roster carries a mailing address for most commissions, and for a great many notaries that address is their home. It is ingested because the state's file contains it and dropped at the server boundary — no public page, API response or export has ever included it.
We also do not publish reviews or ratings, and no photographs or description of a notary's services unless that notary has claimed their own page and written it. Nothing on an unclaimed page is authored by us or by anyone else. There is nothing to be flattered by and nothing to dispute.
Claimed and unclaimed pages
A page is unclaimed until the notary it names proves the commission is theirs. Until then it shows the state's record and nothing more. Once claimed, everything added — services, hours, languages, a photo — is written by that notary, and the state's record continues to sit beside it unchanged.
Checking a listing, or asking us to remove one
Every commission record on this site can be checked against its state's published file; California's is linked above. If a listing is wrong, the state's record is what needs correcting first — we republish what the state publishes, so a correction there reaches us on the next sync.
If you are the notary and you would rather not be listed at all, you can ask us to remove your listing. We do not require a reason.