Data Accuracy & Reliability Policy

Here’s one fact about our little corner of the internet that most don’t notice… Currently, we have more than 7,000 different DMV offices and locations throughout the entirety of the United States cataloged and popular in our database. All of this enables you to easily find a local DMV office near you using just a ZIP code, and it allows you to navigate through the many DMV locations throughout your town, city, county, state, or the whole of the US-of-A. With that in mind, the accuracy and reliability of our data is of the utmost importance.

This is a database that we’ve been working on and has continually grown and expanded over the course of more than 20 years since Online DMV was founded back in 1999. At the time, it started as a hobbyist site, but as we grew bigger and gained a larger audience, we’ve since had a chance to work more closely with the actual Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) across each state. This is particularly so since back then, not every governmental body like the DMV had its own website yet, especially for tinier, more remote DMV offices.

The Value We Place In Our Database

It’s worth mentioning too that while we may have ‘D-M-V’ in our name, Online DMV remains a wholly separate and completely independent entity. In other words, we’re not funded, controlled, or influenced by the DMV of any state, not to mention other governmental organizations in the US. We’re a self-funded business, though we do work closely with the actual state DMV authorities – whichever they’re referred to or are called in your state – to complete our database and fill in any gaps.

Fundamentally, as a directory listing site for DMV locations throughout the United States, we’re here to show you each DMV office’s contact information, such as their phone number, email address, and mailing address, as well as their physical address, letting you know how to get there, their operating hours, and so much more. In recent years, we’ve further expanded this database with a lot of research and analysis to encompass some other things that you might want to know about each DMV location.

The latter might include facts like what their peak hours are, should you wish to avoid getting stuck in long lines, what parking and accessibility options are available at each DMV office, what specific services they provide, and the nitty gritty of navigating your way through their online booking systems to schedule an appointment. Naturally, filling in most of these details manually would have taken us a really long time, and be unnecessarily tedious, which is why we work with each state’s DMV to supplement the foundations of our database.

For context, if you want to know more about how and where we stand on copyright laws and intellectual property rights, check out our Copyright Policy here.

How We Complete And Fill In Our Database

In short, as to how we complete our database, we’re pulling all this information directly from each state’s DMV, mainly by exporting CSV datasets and then adding that to our DMV location finder tool. It’s basically a really long spreadsheet that houses all that DMV location information, which we can then import into our own database. This doesn’t just expedite the process and make things easier for us, but it also guarantees that the information in our directory listings and guide articles are as accurate as they can be.

This is given the fact that these are the same location and directory information that the state DMVs themselves showcase on their own website. We then add our signature spin on this by compiling these CSV datasets for the DMVs across all states and then housing them under one, singular website – Online DMV. In so doing, no matter where you’re from in the US, you could find the DMV location and directory information for every single state on here, without even leaving our domain, and without having to slowly navigate each state’s official DMV website.

We’re all about helping to make this information be presented in a way that’s easier to read, has a much more unified user experience, and that you can access this information more quickly and conveniently, rather than the official state DMV websites. Additionally, besides our directory listings, Online DMV is now home to countless other explainer blog posts and guide articles related to the DMV, such as those discussing driving laws in each state, the legal and regulatory pitfalls every motorist faces, and much more.

Check out our Information Hub to find more of these explainers, guiding you on things like taking your driver’s test, to more legal matters like reporting to the DMV.

Additionally, if you’d like to learn more about the guiding principles that govern how we create and share content, check out our Editorial Policy here.

What Do These Dataset Exports Contain

All those aforementioned CSV dataset exports contain a wealth of information that helps make Online DMV one of the leading directory listing sites out there for DMV-related services. They don’t just include the name of the office, but also their street address, phone numbers, opening and closing hours, and for specific reasons, even their GPS coordinates. As you can imagine, not just anyone can get access to all this information from the DMV, so this is where our years’ worth of cooperation with each state’s DMV helps us massively.

It allows us to manage this vast directory database at scale, but of course, over time, and even in the moment, not all that directory information imported from the CSV datasets might be 100% accurate. This is why we pour countless hours into making sure and double-checking that everything we present is accurate and up-to-date. If one of your local DMV offices changes to a new location or has updated their operating hours, we’ll be sure to try and catch that, and then update all our database and directory listings, accordingly.

As we mentioned earlier, over the past couple of years, we’ve been supplementing all our directory listings with way more information than these CSV dataset exports provide at best. These include, among others, providing directions on how to more easily drive to a specific DMV office, mentioning what sort of services they provide, and discussing which service types could be done on a walk-in basis, or if they require you to make an appointment beforehand. This is the sort of thing you wish you knew before dropping by a DMV office blindly.

How We Keep Our Database Up-To-Date

Our expertise and experience in the automotive world and all things related to motoring laws and DMV policies help us with adding more value to all this information, and crucially, in making sure that we present them in a way that makes it easier for you to read, refer to, and understand.  All this combined, our reliance on state DMV authorities in completing our database is why we have full confidence in the accuracy and the reliability of our data, and all the information that you get from Online DMV.

Nevertheless, while getting all that directory information straight from the source normally guarantees that all our data is solid, robustly dependable, and could be relied upon regularly, as noted earlier, over time, they would inevitably go out of date. As such, we spend countless hours making sure that our database remains up-to-date, and with over 7,000 individual DMV locations to go through, updating them won’t be an easy job. Yet, this is one we’re committed to doing and will continue to work on in the future.

All of this is in the spirit of making sure that when you pull up Online DMV to check out a local DMV location in your neighborhood, it’s the most accurate and precise directory information possible. With that in mind, if we did miss something, or if you want to report issues or inaccuracies with our directory information, or if there are gaps in our database that you managed to spot before us, feel free to let us know! You can do this either via our Contact Us page or by dropping in an email directly to our inbox at [email protected].