Help & FAQ

ObituaryMonitor continuously scans public obituary pages across the web, including newspaper websites, funeral home directories, and obituary aggregators. We only access publicly available information.

While we monitor many sources, we cannot access every obituary published online. Some obituaries may be behind paywalls, published in print-only formats, or on websites we don't yet cover. We're constantly expanding our coverage.

Common names like 'John Smith' appear in many obituaries. By adding a state, city, or county, we can filter out obituaries from other locations, significantly reducing false matches. For common names, we strongly recommend adding at least a state.

We use a scoring system that considers multiple factors: exact name match (first and last name), location match (state, city, county), and additional identifiers like relatives' names. We only notify you when the confidence score is 90% or higher, which requires matching on multiple criteria.

The confidence score (0-100%) indicates how certain we are that the obituary matches your watch. A higher score means more matching criteria were found. We only send notifications for matches with 90%+ confidence.

Yes, you can create as many watches as you need. Each watch is independent and will be matched separately against our obituary database.

When you receive a match notification, you can click 'Confirm' if it's the right person, or 'Not a match' if it's not. This feedback helps you keep track of results but doesn't affect our matching algorithm.

Our system continuously polls obituary sources. New obituaries are typically processed within hours of being published online.

Yes, your watch list is completely private. Only you can see the people you're tracking. We never share your personal information or watch list with third parties.