GovScan has been created by Eric Ervin, a municipal government professional who is constantly on the lookout for data and information on current trends and news in local municipal, county and state government. While traditional web search has had an immense impact on available information in local government, these search results often come with a good deal of non-targeted information.

Luckily for us, Google has come to our aid with the ability to build our own custom search engines. This new offering, allowing for the creation of targeted search results, has led us to fill a much needed void in precise local government search results.

GovScan is built upon the Google Custom Search engine platform and strives to give the searcher extremely targeted results within certain geographies. GovScan has indexed over 5000 city, town, county and state government websites within all 50 states to build the first of its kind local government search engine targeted by state powered by Google.

I hope you find GovScan a helpful tool in researching local government news, issues and trends. Please feel free to contact GovScan.com with any suggestions, comments or questions.

Sample uses of GovScan, the local government search engine:

• Find local government databases (.xls, .dbf data)
• Discover available GIS data and shapefiles (.shp)
• Research city and county building codes
• Determine sign codes for specific government entities
• Keep up to date on what is happening in local government