Privacy Policy

What we collect

Business listings. Names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, categories, and hours of businesses. Most listings come from open data (Overture Maps Foundation and Foursquare OS Places); some are added or corrected by owners, visitors, and our staff. For some listings we also read the short description and opening hours a business publishes on its own website.

What you send us through forms.

• Service requests(the “get quotes” form on category pages): your name, phone, email, ZIP code, the service you need, how soon, and your message.
• Add a business: the business details plus your name and email.
• Claims: your name, email, phone, your role at the business, and how you want to prove it.
• Corrections and reports: the change you suggest.
• Owner edits: listing details, descriptions, services, hours, photos, and logos you upload.

Sign-in. Business owners and staff sign in with Google. We receive your name, email address, and whether Google has verified that email. We do not receive your Google password.

Payments. If you buy a Featured listing, Stripe processes the payment. We receive a customer ID, subscription status, and billing dates. We never see or store your full card number.

Automatic information. Like most websites, our server receives your IP address and browser details with each request. We use the IP address to limit how often forms can be submitted (to stop spam) and to guess an approximate city so the search box can start with a location. That guess is made on our own server with an offline database (IP geolocation by DB-IP); it is not stored and you can change it.

Google user data

SiteCity uses Google Sign-In only so business owners and our staff can sign in. It does not use any other Google API and does not read your Gmail, Drive, contacts, calendar, or any other Google account content.

What we access.Your name, email address, profile picture, and whether Google has verified your email, as provided by Google’s standard sign-in (the openid, email, and profile scopes).

How we use it.Only your verified email address is used, to: sign you in; check whether you are a SiteCity staff member; match you to an approved claim so you can edit that listing; approve a pending claim automatically when your email is at the same domain as the listing’s website; and start a Featured listing checkout.

What we store. Your sign-in is kept in an encrypted session cookie in your browser; we do not keep sign-in sessions in our database. When you edit a listing, your email is saved with that change as a record of who made it.

Who we share it with. If you buy a Featured listing, your email is sent to Stripe to create the subscription and receipt. We do not share Google user data with anyone else.

How we protect it. Traffic to SiteCity is encrypted with HTTPS, the session cookie is encrypted, and only staff whose role requires it can see stored records.

Retention and deletion. The session cookie expires after 30 days without use, and signing out deletes it. Change records are kept while the listing is in the directory. To have your Google user data deleted, email privacy@sitecity.org; we will delete it within 30 days, except where the law requires us to keep billing records. You can also remove SiteCity’s access at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

What we never do. We do not use Google user data for advertising, do not sell it or give it to data brokers, do not use it to decide credit or lending, and do not use it to develop, improve, or train AI or machine-learning models. Our use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

Cookies and analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people use the site (pages viewed, rough location, device type). Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser. You can block them with your browser settings or Google’s opt-out add-on. If you sign in, we set a session cookie that keeps you signed in; it is required for signing in to work. We do not use advertising cookies.

How we use it

• To run the directory and show accurate listings.
• To review submissions, corrections, and ownership claims before anything is published.
• To pass your service request to businesses that can do the job, and to follow up on it.
• To let verified owners manage their listing and to bill Featured listings.
• To prevent spam, fraud, and abuse.
• To understand and improve the site.

Service requests are private: nothing you type into that form is published on the site. Claim details are used only to verify ownership.

Who we share it with

• Local businesses, when you send a service request. They receive what you entered so they can contact you.
• Service providers that run parts of SiteCity for us: GoHighLevel (where service requests are managed and owner photos are stored), Stripe (payments), Google (sign-in and analytics), and our hosting provider. They may use the data only to provide their service to us.
• The public, for listing details that are meant to be public: business name, address, phone, website, hours, description, services, and approved photos.
• Authorities, when the law requires it or to protect people and the site.
• A buyer or successor, if SiteCity is sold or merged.

We do not sell your personal information.

Links to other sites

Listings link to business websites and to third-party sources. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which this policy does not cover.

How long we keep it

We keep information for as long as we need it for the purposes above: listings while they are in the directory, submissions and claims while they are reviewed and as a record of changes, service requests while they are being worked, and billing records as long as tax and accounting law requires. Rate-limit records are held in memory for about a minute and never written to disk.

Your choices and rights

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct or delete it.
• Ask us to correct or remove a business listing. Owners can claim a listing and edit it directly.
• Block analytics cookies as described above.

Email privacy@sitecity.org to make a request. We will answer within 30 days and will not treat you differently for asking. Depending on where you live (for example California), you may have further rights under local law; we will honor them.

Security

We use HTTPS, limit staff access to what each role needs, and log every staff change to listings. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed without permission.

Children

SiteCity is not meant for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has sent us information, email privacy@sitecity.org and we will delete it.

Changes

We will post any change to this policy on this page and update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will make it clear on the site.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your information: privacy@sitecity.org. See also our Terms of Service.