State entity directories: reaching the real filing office

There is no national register of American companies. Business registration is a state function, which means there are fifty-odd separate state entity directories (one per state, plus the District of Columbia and the territories), each maintained by a different office, with its own vocabulary, its own search behavior, and its own idea of what should be public.

That fragmentation creates two problems. The first is finding the right office. The second, and the expensive one, is telling the real office apart from the commercial sites that have grown up around it to charge people for records the state provides.

What to take away

The office is not always called the Secretary of State.
An industry exists to sit between people and free public records.
Commercial databases that copy registry data across many states are not scams, and they are genuinely useful for one job: finding out where an entity might be registered when you do not know.
Once you reach the right office, do not carry assumptions from the last state you used.

Finding the office of record without guessing

The office is not always called the Secretary of State. In California, business filings sit with the Secretary of State. In Delaware, they sit with the Division of Corporations. In New York, they sit with the Department of State. In Arizona, they sit with the Corporation Commission. Elsewhere the filings may sit with a department of state, a corporations division, a corporation commission, a department of licensing or commerce, or another agency entirely. Assuming one name is how people end up on the wrong site.

Each of those offices publishes its own directory, and the address is the fastest way to tell them apart. The California Secretary of State's business search sits at bizfileOnline.sos.ca.gov, Delaware's Division of Corporations at corp.delaware.gov, and New York's Department of State at dos.ny.gov. The pattern to look for is a state .gov address, not a commercial domain that merely sounds official.

Reaching the office of record

Need the state business filing office?

Yes

Start at the state's top-level government portal

Arrive from another government page

A reliable route, in order of preference:

Finding the office of record

Start from the state's own top-level government portaland navigate inward. Every state has one, and every one of them has a path to the business filing office. This takes a minute longer than a search and eliminates the whole problem.
Arrive from another government page.State tax authorities, licensing boards, and procurement portals routinely link to the filing office. A link from one government domain to another is strong evidence you have the right destination.
If you must use a search engine, read the domain, not the page.Scroll past the ads. Check the address bar against the state's government domain before you click anything on the page, and certainly before you type anything into it.

The domain is the check that actually works. Titles, seals, page layouts, and official-sounding names are all trivially copied. A government web address is not.

For general orientation on what business registration involves before you go looking, the Small Business Administration's business guide at sba.gov is a neutral federal starting point, though it will not do the state-specific work for you. Working the search itself once you arrive is the subject of secretary of state search.

Recognizing the commercial lookalikes

An industry exists to sit between people and free public records. Some of it is legitimate: filing and registered-agent services such as LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent do the paperwork on your behalf, and they say so. Some of it is designed to be mistaken for the state itself. Both charge for things you can often do directly.

Signals you are not on a government site

Domain is not the state's
Payment appears before the record does
It sells the state's own products
Official-flavoured naming
Government-styled mail and email

Signals that you are not on a government site:

The domain is not the state's.A .com or .org address, or a government-sounding word bolted onto a commercial domain. This is the single most dependable test.
Payment appears before the record does.Many states let you search basic entity records at no charge. If a site wants a card number before showing you a status or a formation date, check the state's own site before paying.
It sells the state's own products.Certificates of good standing, copies of filings, annual report submission, reinstatement: packaged with a service fee on top, and sometimes without making clear that the state's fee is separate.
Official-flavoured naming.Words like state, division, filings, registry, compliance center, and processing center assembled into something that reads like an agency but is not one.
Government-styled mail and email.Newly registered companies are a well-known target for mailings dressed as official notices, demanding a fee for a "required" filing or certificate by a deadline. The tell is usually a private return address and a fine-print disclaimer.
A disclaimer at the bottom.Sites in this business commonly carry a line stating they are not affiliated with any government agency. Scroll down and look for it. If it is there, believe it.
Urgency.Real filing deadlines exist, but the state does not need your card details in the next ten minutes.

Several of these signals are the general shape of a paid-for-something-free approach rather than anything peculiar to registries, and the Federal Trade Commission's consumer alerts describe the same pattern from the other direction.

If you have already paid one, treat it the way you would any card given to an unfamiliar merchant. And check whether the filing you paid for was actually made: the authoritative answer to that is on the state's record rather than in the confirmation email, and it will appear in the entity's filing history if it went through.

Aggregators are a different thing

Commercial databases that copy registry data across many states, such as OpenCorporates and Bizapedia, are not scams, and they are genuinely useful for one job: finding out where an entity might be registered when you do not know. Sweep broadly, then leave.

What each source is good for

State filing office

Authoritative status: Yes
Cross-state discovery: No
Current filings: Yes
Evidence you can cite: Yes

Federal filing systems

Authoritative status: No
Cross-state discovery: No
Current filings: Yes
Evidence you can cite: Yes

Commercial aggregators

Authoritative status: No
Cross-state discovery: Yes
Current filings: Stale
Evidence you can cite: No

Sites selling public records

Authoritative status: No
Cross-state discovery: No
Current filings: No
Evidence you can cite: No

What they cannot do is serve as your source. Their data is a copy of a copy, refreshed on a schedule you do not control, and the field you care about most, registration status, is exactly the one that goes stale first. Verify at the office of record, cite the office of record, and record the date you were there.

Good for

State filing office: Authoritative status, filings, identifiers, certificates
Federal filing systems: The small subset of companies that file federally
Commercial aggregators: Finding candidate states quickly
Sites selling public records: Nothing you cannot do yourself

Not good for

State filing office: Cross-state discovery in one query
Federal filing systems: Ordinary private companies
Commercial aggregators: Evidence, current status, anything you will rely on
Sites selling public records: Everything

Expect variation, and check rather than assume

Once you reach the right office, do not carry assumptions from the last state you used. Things that differ, sometimes dramatically:

What varies between states

Status vocabulary
What is disclosed about people
Whether documents are viewable
Where assumed names live
Digitization depth
Search behavior
Fees and turnaround

Status vocabulary.The words used for existence, compliance, and administrative action are state-specific. Read the office's own legend.
What is disclosed about people.Officer and manager disclosure varies by state and entity type, as covered in officer lookup.
Whether documents are viewable.Some offices show images of filings; some sell copies; some show only an index.
Where assumed names live.Trade name and DBA registration sits with the state in some places and with a county in others. In California, for instance, a fictitious business name statement goes to the county clerk, while the entity's legal name stays with the Secretary of State.
Digitization depth.How far back the online record goes varies, and older entities may have a paper tail that is not indexed.
Search behavior.Exact match, starts-with, and contains are all in use, and they produce very different results from the same query. Most offices document this on a help page. Reading it once saves repeated dead ends.
Fees and turnaround.These change. Look them up on the office's own page each time rather than relying on a remembered figure.

A repeatable routine

Reach the office through a government path, and confirm the domain before typing anything.
Read the office's search help page once for that state, and note how matching works.
Search broadly (root word, no suffix), rather than by full legal name.
Capture the entity file number as soon as you have a match, and use it for everything afterwards.
If nothing is found, check whether you are in the right index and whether the business trades under an assumed name.
Record the office, the URL you actually used, the date, and what you searched. Six months later that note is what makes the check repeatable.

The mental model

Your target is always the office of record for one specific state. Everything else (resellers, aggregators, cached vendor data, your own file from last quarter), is a copy of what that office said at some point in the past.

Copies are fine for finding things. They are not fine for deciding things. Know which one you are looking at, and know how old it is.

Common questions

How do I know I am on the real office's site?

By the web address, and by nothing else. Seals, titles, and layouts are copied trivially. Reach the office from the state's own portal or from another government page, and check the address bar before typing anything.

The office is not called the Secretary of State here. Have I got the wrong place?

Probably not. Several jurisdictions put business filings with a corporations division, a commission, or a department whose main business is something else. Follow the state portal's own path to business filings rather than the name you expected.

Is it worth paying a service to file for me?

That is a commercial decision, and plenty of legitimate providers do useful work. What is worth knowing is which part of the fee is the state's and which is theirs, and that the record of whether the filing happened is on the state's site either way.

I got an official-looking letter demanding a fee. Is it real?

Check it against the office's own record and the office's own fee page before paying anything. Newly registered companies are a well-known target for mailings dressed as official notices, and the return address and the fine print usually settle it.

Which state's register should I search first?

The state of formation, not the state where the work happens. If you do not know it, ask the counterparty; their own documents normally say, and a foreign qualification filing names it explicitly.