You check whether a contractor has complaints, a business is registered or a product has been recalled, and nothing comes up. Good news? Maybe. "Nothing found" is only worth as much as the search behind it: the wrong database, a misspelled name or a search that silently failed all look exactly like a clean result. AI makes this worse, because it will happily say "there are no records of complaints" when it never looked.
The checklist
Ticks aren't saved anywhere.
Anything you couldn't check goes in its own pile marked "unverifiable", with a real reason: what you looked for and why it couldn't be found.
I need to check whether [name, with location and any registration or licence number] appears in [type of record, e.g. licence register, complaints database, court records, recall list]. 1. List the official places to search, with links, and how each one is searched (by name, number, etc.). 2. Give me one positive-control search that should return a result, so I know the search works. 3. List the name variants and look-alikes I should try or rule out. Don't tell me what the results are. I'll run the searches myself and report back.
Here is what I searched and what I found: [paste your notes]. Write a short "what was checked and what wasn't" note, as of [date]. Say "no record found in..." rather than "clean". List the limits of each search. Keep it to one paragraph.
Worked example: a contractor's licence
Lena is hiring a contractor for a kitchen remodel. Her assistant says the contractor "has no complaints on record". She asks where it looked, and it can't say. So she plans the search. She searches the state licensing board by the contractor's licence number, and first by the name of a contractor she knows is listed (the positive control works). She tries the business name and the owner's name. Her note reads: "Licence active in the state contractor board as of 24 October. No complaints found in the board's public complaint search, by licence number and business name, as of 24 October. Didn't check: small-claims court records, other states."
Common mistakes
- Accepting an AI's "no records found" without asking where it looked.
- Searching one spelling and stopping.
- Writing "clean" when you mean "nothing in the one place I checked".
- Leaving off the date. Records change.
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