Our Methodology
We believe in transparency about how our obituary monitoring works, what our accuracy standards are, and where our limitations lie. This page explains our matching methodology, data sources, and the honest constraints of any obituary monitoring service.
Our Philosophy: Accuracy Over Volume
We prioritize sending you accurate, high-confidence alerts over maximizing the number of alerts we send. This means:
How Our Matching Works
We use multiple factors to calculate match confidence. The more factors that align, the higher the confidence score.
Name Matching
Primary WeightExact and fuzzy matching on first name, last name, and middle name/initial. Handles common nicknames (William/Bill, Robert/Bob) and spelling variations.
Geographic Location
High WeightCity, state, and regional matching. Accounts for people who lived in multiple locations or died away from home.
Age/Birth Year
High WeightWhen approximate age or birth year is provided, we verify the obituary age falls within an acceptable range (typically ±3 years to account for reporting variations).
Family Connections
Medium-High WeightSpouse names, children's names, and other relatives mentioned in obituaries are cross-referenced against provided information when available.
Confidence Threshold
Minimum Confidence for Alerts
We only send alerts when our matching algorithm calculates 90% or higher confidence.
Matches between 70-89% are held for internal review and may be released if additional corroborating information is found. Matches below 70% are discarded to prevent false positive noise.
Our Data Sources
We monitor publicly available obituary sources across the United States. We do not scrape private databases or access restricted records.
Funeral Home Websites
1,500+Direct monitoring of funeral home obituary pages, including major chains and regional providers.
Strong coverage for urban/suburban areas; variable for rural locations
Newspaper Obituary Sections
800+Daily and weekly newspapers with online obituary sections, including major metros and regional papers.
Better coverage for daily papers; weekly community papers less complete
Memorial Aggregation Platforms
10+Major obituary aggregators including Legacy.com partnerships, Dignity Memorial, Tributes.com, and others.
Good coverage for sources with aggregator partnerships
Death Notice Databases
MultiplePublic death notice databases and cemetery/burial record sites that include obituary information.
Supplementary coverage; may have delayed updates
Total: 2,500+ sources monitored. Source count is approximate and changes as we add new sources and remove defunct ones. We continuously work to expand coverage.
Scanning Frequency
4x
Daily scans minimum
24/7
Continuous monitoring
4-24hr
Typical alert delay
Known Limitations
We believe in being transparent about what our service cannot do. No obituary monitoring service can guarantee 100% coverage.
Not all deaths have obituaries
Approximately 30% of deaths in the United States never result in a publicly published obituary. Families may choose not to publish for privacy, cost, or personal reasons. Our service cannot find obituaries that don't exist.
Print-only publications
Some smaller newspapers and community publications only publish obituaries in print editions without digital versions. These are not accessible to any online monitoring service.
Small independent funeral homes
Very small funeral homes without websites or with non-indexed websites may not be covered. We continuously work to expand coverage, but gaps exist in rural areas.
Processing delay
There is always some delay between obituary publication and alert delivery. Typically 4-24 hours depending on source indexing speed and our scanning frequency.
Common name challenges
Very common names (John Smith, Mary Johnson) require additional matching factors to achieve high confidence. Without location, age, or family information, false positive rates increase.
Name variations and errors
Obituaries may use formal names, nicknames, maiden names, or contain misspellings. While we account for common variations, unusual spellings may be missed.
Privacy Commitment
What We Do
- Monitor publicly available obituary notices
- Encrypt your watch list data
- Delete your data upon account cancellation
- Process matches on secure servers
What We Don't Do
- Scrape private databases or restricted records
- Sell or share your monitoring data
- Access death certificates or vital records
- Store obituary content beyond matching needs