About FYIVTFinder (the crawler)

FYIVT's own indexer — our name is on it, and a human answers for it.

What this is

FYIVTFinder is an automated visitor (a "crawler") built and run by FYIVT, an independent Vermont news site. It visits Vermont public websites — state agencies, town and city sites, public-notice boards, and local sources — so that public information about Vermont is easier for Vermonters to find.

Ask to be included

Run a Vermont website — a business, a farmstand, a town group, a blog — and want the Finder to know about it? Tell us here. A human reviews every request.

The fine print, in plain words

• Being in the Finder is FREE — always. Nobody from FYIVT will ever charge you for a listing. Anyone who tries is a scammer; tell us.
• We link and index, we don't copy. Your content stays on your site and stays yours.
• Listings are at FYIVT's discretion. We can decline or remove any site, at any time — including anything illegal, deceptive, or outside the Finder's Vermont scope.
• A listing is not an endorsement. The Finder helps people find Vermont sites; it doesn't vouch for them.
• Want out? Email finder@fyivt.com and we'll remove you.

Are you located in Vermont?

Your email is used only to manage your listing — verification, changes, removal. We never sell it, trade it, or share it, and we won't use it to send you anything else. Our newsletter is a separate sign-up, and this isn't it. Full details in our privacy policy.

I've read and understand the above. (required) Ask to be included

Why we run it

Public notices, meeting agendas, and minutes are public by law, but they are scattered across hundreds of separate websites. FYIVTFinder indexes and points: we note what exists and where, and our links always go to the official source. We don't republish other people's pages.

The public search this crawler feeds lives at fyivt.com/finder — this page explains the crawler that identifies itself with this address.

For website owners

If you saw this address in your server logs, it arrived in our crawler's User-Agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; FYIVTFinder/1.0; +https://fyivt.com/finder)

FYIVTFinder identifies itself honestly on every request and crawls gently — rate-limited, a few pages at a time, never hammering a server. If it is visiting your site in a way you have questions or concerns about, email finder@fyivt.com and a human being — not a form, not a bot — will answer you.

Robots.txt, and who can opt out

For ordinary Vermont sites — businesses, farms, community groups, nonprofits doing their work — we honor robots.txt and we honor removal requests. Fair is fair: if you want out, you're out.

Two exceptions, stated plainly. Public bodies: the public's business is public — we index government sites regardless of robots settings (which are usually vendor defaults the town never chose), and we log what we find. Civic actors: organizations that participate in making Vermont law — registering lobbyists, testifying in committee, publishing legislative agendas and scorecards — are treated the same way. Their public statements about lawmaking are part of the public record of lawmaking. We note that most such robots files welcome Google's crawler while excluding others; that is choosing which index to appear in, not privacy, and our honest, gentle, clearly-identified crawler claims the same courtesy. Classification as a civic actor is evidence-based (lobbyist registrations, committee appearances) and reviewed by a human.

Who runs it

FYIVTFinder is operated by FYIVT, an independent, self-hosted news site made in Vermont. Reach the Finder team: finder@fyivt.com.