Methodology: how whoreallyowns knows who owns what
This site answers one question — who really owns this local business? — for 210,650 veterinary clinics, dental practices, hospices, nursing homes, home-health agencies and HVAC & plumbing companies across the United States. Every ownership claim on every page links to the evidence behind it.
Evidence tiers
| confirmed | The owner's own location listing, a direct owner confirmation, or a mandated government ownership filing (for example CMS provider-ownership disclosures). These are the strongest sources: the owner or a regulator states the relationship. |
|---|---|
| reported | Press releases and news coverage of an acquisition. Reliable but second-hand; shown as “reported” until corroborated by a confirmed-tier source. |
| suspected | Indirect signals such as a shared registered agent or an HQ mailing address on a state license. These are never published as ownership labels — they only queue further research until corroborated by one of the tiers above. |
Claims policy
- Every public label derives only from accepted evidence with a citation URL that was fetched and confirmed. No fetch, no fact.
- We name organizations only, never individual people, as owners.
- We never assert that a business is “independent”. The absence of an ownership record is shown as no known corporate owner — absence of evidence is not proof of independence.
- Unverifiable ownership claims are omitted, never guessed.
Data sources
Claims are compiled from public records: companies' own published location directories, state facility-license registries, federally mandated provider-ownership disclosures, and press coverage of acquisitions — each fetched and verified before use. The citations on every page show exactly which sources back each claim.
Owner claims
Owners of businesses with no known corporate owner can claim their page. They sign a statement that the business is not owned, controlled or managed by a private-equity firm, corporate consolidator or franchise system, and prove they control the business's website. The page then shows owner-attested independent: this is the owner's own statement, not our finding. Verified means we have also checked it against public records. Claims expire after a year unless renewed, and we take them down if we find evidence of an outside owner.
Freshness
The directory is refreshed continuously. A business's page shows when it was last observed in a source.
Corrections
Every page shows the citations behind its claims, so errors can be traced to their source. If a source itself is wrong or stale, the refresh picks up the correction when the source does.