How We Build and Verify Our Directory

FindBoatStorage covers 10,431 boat and RV storage facilities across 48 states and 4,457 cities. Here’s exactly how we find, validate, and maintain that data.

Last updated: March 2026

1. Discovery — Multiple Source Scraping

We identify boat and RV storage facilities using Google Maps via Outscraper (19 states in Phase 1), then expanded coverage to 28 additional states using the Google Places API directly. This two-phase approach yielded 8,713 raw records in Phase 1 and an additional 2,533 records in Phase 2. We filter out general self-storage facilities at source — every record must be specifically designed for boats, RVs, or both.

2. Cleaning & Deduplication

8,713 raw Phase 1 records were reduced to 8,237 after deduplication and 7,898 after validation filtering. Permanently closed facilities are excluded. Businesses that don't specialize in boat or RV storage are removed. We apply exact-match and fuzzy-match deduplication on business name + address pairs before any manual review.

3. Validation — Rules + AI Classification

Each facility is reviewed using a rules-based pipeline combined with Claude Haiku for edge cases. Classification is YES (include) / MAYBE (include with lower confidence) / NO (exclude). A facility gets YES only when its primary purpose is clearly boat or RV storage. MAYBE records are retained with lower confidence scores displayed to users. NO records are excluded entirely.

4. Data Enrichment — 4-Pass Pipeline

For each validated facility, we run 4 enrichment passes: (1) website crawl via Crawl4AI to extract structured data from facility websites; (2) regex extraction across 5 patterns to capture pricing, storage types, dimensions, security, and amenities; (3) Google Places API to pull reviews, ratings, and photos; (4) a review-sentiment pass to extract qualitative signals from customer reviews. Each pass adds structured data with a confidence score.

5. Confidence Scoring

Every enriched data point carries a confidence score from 0.0 to 1.0. Values below 0.5 are not displayed — we show "Contact for details" instead. Values between 0.5 and 0.8 are shown as approximate. Only values at 0.8+ are displayed as confirmed. This means our pricing data (12% of listings) is accurate where it appears — we don't guess.

6. Ongoing Maintenance

Data is refreshed on a rolling basis. Facility owners can claim their listing to update information directly — over 8 facilities have done so since launch in February 2026. Users can report incorrect data via our contact form. High-traffic city pages (Florida, Texas, California) are prioritized for re-verification.

Data Sources

  • • Google Maps / Places API — business listings, ratings, reviews, photos
  • • Outscraper — bulk Google Maps data extraction (Phase 1, 19 states)
  • • Facility websites — crawled via Crawl4AI for structured pricing and feature data
  • • Owner claims — direct operator submissions via our claim flow

Our Zero-Fabrication Policy

We never invent data. If we can’t find pricing information for a facility, we display “Contact for pricing.” If we can’t confirm storage types, we display “Contact for details.” A gap in our data is always preferable to incorrect information. This is why only 12% of listings show a price range — we only display it when we can verify it.