Editorial Standards

Our Editorial Mission

CountyScore is a data-journalism site. Our job is to take the county-level statistics that the federal government already publishes — property taxes, cost of living, crime rates, health outcomes, school quality, disaster risk, water quality, and more — and present them in a form that someone planning a move, comparing places to live, or researching regional trends can actually use. We are not a professional advisory service. We do not provide investment advice, tax advice, real-estate advice, or relocation guidance.

Every page on this site is grounded in a primary-source dataset from a U.S. government agency or an academic institute. Where we compute composite scores or rank counties, we publish the underlying formula on our methodology page. Where we draw on AI assistance for prose, we say so on this page and on the page itself.

Who Writes and Edits This Site

CountyScore is published and edited by Logan Johnson, Founder & Data Editor. Logan designs the data pipeline, sets the methodology, reviews published prose for accuracy against the underlying data, and signs off on every methodology change. Logan is not a licensed real-estate agent, financial advisor, or relocation consultant, and CountyScore does not present itself as a professional advisory service. Logan's role is the data-editor role: ensure statistics on this site match the source datasets, ensure prose stays inside what the data supports, and decline to publish anything that strays into advisory territory.

Long-form features and reported pieces, when published, carry an explicit byline naming the writer and — where relevant — a named subject-matter reviewer. The byline appears at the top of the article.

Where Our Data Comes From

All county-level statistics on this site come from primary government sources. We do not republish data from third-party aggregators. Our active sources are:

• U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) — property taxes, housing costs, median household income, demographics, and consumer expenditure data for every U.S. county.
• FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) — violent and property crime rates per 100,000 residents.
• CDC County Health Rankings & Roadmaps — life expectancy, uninsured rate, and composite health-behavior and clinical-care measures for every U.S. county.
• FEMA National Risk Index (NRI) — natural hazard risk scores by county, including flood, wildfire, and storm exposure.
• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) — school performance, per-pupil spending, enrollment, and graduation rates.
• EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) — drinking water violations and compliance history.
• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) — weather patterns, temperatures, precipitation, and extreme events.
• USDA SSURGO / PHZM — soil composition, pH, drainage, organic matter, and plant hardiness zone data.

Each source's URL, release date, and pull date are documented on the methodology page. Source datasets are in the public domain (federal works) or published under licenses permitting commercial redistribution with attribution.

How We Use AI

Per-county pages on this site include a short, AI-generated narrative summary that contextualizes the statistics for that county. The narrative is produced by Claude (Anthropic) from the same source data shown in the statistics tables on the page. Logan, as Data Editor, reviews the underlying prompt and spot-checks output before publication; the prompt is constrained to forbid causation claims, treatment recommendations, investment advice, and any prose that goes beyond what the source statistics support.

We do not use AI to:

• Generate professional advice of any kind (financial, tax, real-estate, medical, legal).
• Invent statistics, sources, or quotes.
• Write methodology, editorial standards, or correction notices.
• Generate cause-and-effect claims that aren't grounded in the source data.

When the underlying data is updated, narratives are regenerated to stay consistent. AI-generated prose is always paired with the source statistics so readers can verify the numbers themselves.

Corrections Policy

If you spot a factual error — a wrong statistic, a misattributed source, a broken citation — email logan@countyscore.com with the page URL and the specific issue. We aim to acknowledge every report within five business days and to publish a correction or update the page within ten business days for substantive issues.

Substantive corrections (changes to a statistic, methodology, or claim) are noted in a "Corrections" entry on the page itself with the date of the correction and a short description of what changed. Typographical and formatting fixes are made silently.

How CountyScore Is Funded

CountyScore is independently owned and operated. It is the flagship product of the ByCounty Network of data sites. Funding comes from two transparent sources:

• Display advertising served by Google AdSense and similar networks. Ad placements are clearly labeled and do not influence editorial decisions or which counties we rank where.
• Affiliate links to services relevant to people researching counties (mortgage lenders, moving companies, home insurance providers, etc.). Affiliate links are labeled "Sponsored" and never determine which counties we feature on data pages.

We do not accept paid content, sponsored statistics, or advertorials. No data source, advertiser, or affiliate has any influence over the methodology, rankings, or editorial choices on this site.

Update Cadence

Underlying data is refreshed annually, on the release schedule of each source (Census ACS releases annually; FBI UCR releases annually; CDC County Health Rankings releases in spring; FEMA NRI updates periodically; NCES updates annually; EPA SDWIS updates continuously; NOAA NCEI updates annually). Narratives are regenerated when the underlying data for a county changes. The methodology page displays its own "Last reviewed" date and changelog. This editorial-standards page was last reviewed on May 14, 2026.