Methodology

AdvisorCensus is a directory of every firm in the Form ADV universe: 43,670 investment advisory firms (SEC- and state-registered firms and exempt reporting advisers) as of October 2026, each with a page generated from its filing. This page explains where the data comes from, how firms are grouped, what is derived, and what the directory does not do.

Sources

The SEC publishes monthly Investment Adviser Information Reports, one listing every SEC-registered adviser and one every exempt reporting adviser, with a subset of each firm's Form ADV Part 1A answers; the IAPD compilation feeds do the same for state-registered advisers. AdvisorCensus reads both each month, the SEC's Form ADV filing data for the fields the roster omits, and the Part 2A brochure archives for the niche pages. Firm names, cities, registration types and dates, assets under management, compensation arrangements, advisory activities, client types, employee counts, state registrations, websites, and disclosure answers appear exactly as filed, with the filing period printed on every page. Nothing is entered by hand.

What every firm page shows

The firm's primary business name and legal name, its doing-business-as names, its city and state (never a street address), registration type and status, registration date and years registered, regulatory assets under management with the discretionary and non-discretionary split, compensation arrangements (Item 5.E), advisory activities (Item 5.G), client types (Item 5.D), wrap-fee participation, employee counts, the states where the firm is registered or notice-filed, the Item 11 disclosure questions answered yes (how many, and which ones in plain English; never what happened or who was involved, which is on the IAPD record), and the websites listed on the filing, with a link to the firm's record on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. Lists and counts are of firms; an individual adviser appears only when a firm with an enhanced profile lists them, as provided by the firm.

How firms are grouped

A firm's principal office ZIP code is matched to a core-based statistical area with the HUD-USPS crosswalk, taking the area that holds most of the ZIP's business addresses. A ZIP the crosswalk doesn't carry, such as a PO box, is placed by the filed city and state when every ZIP of that city with the same first three digits falls in one area. Metro pages cover the 387 metropolitan statistical areas in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as delineated by the Office of Management and Budget in July 2023 (Bulletin 23-01); Puerto Rico's six are not included. Firms in micropolitan areas or outside any statistical area appear on their state page. Firms whose filing suppresses the office address (a private residence) are placed from the mailing address when one is filed. A state-registered firm that publishes no address appears on the page of the one state it is registered in, because a state-registered adviser registers with the state of its principal office; other firms that publish no address appear on the national index only. State pages group firms by the state of the principal office; the national index counts every firm, including firms with a principal office outside the United States.

Derived pages

Fee-model pages, one set for each state and each metro area, read Form ADV, which has no fee-only box. A firm appears on its state's and its metro's fee-only page when it is paid only by a percentage of assets, hourly charges, fixed fees, or subscription fees on Form ADV Item 5.E (no commissions, performance-based fees, or other compensation), with no sales-related compensation ties in the same filing: no employee registered with a broker-dealer or licensed as an insurance agent (Item 5.B), no brokerage, insurance, real estate, or other product sales business (Item 6.A), no related broker-dealer, insurance company, real estate broker, or futures commission merchant (Item 7.A), and no referral fees from others or other sales interest (Item 8); on the flat-fee pages when it checks fixed fees on Item 5.E; and on the hourly pages when it checks hourly charges. The subscription box, which the form reserves for a newsletter or periodical, counts toward neither. The "How paid" filter on every list lists each Item 5.E answer as filed. These pages describe filed answers, not a fee-only attestation, and no firm page labels a firm fee-only. Niche pages read SEC-registered firms' Form ADV Part 2A brochures: a firm appears when its current brochure states, in its own words, a focus on that client group, and that sentence appears word for word in the brochure. Presence means the brochure states the focus; absence means no such statement was found, or the firm is state-registered (state-registered firms file their brochures with the states, which AdvisorCensus does not read). Niche and fee pages are indexed only when three or more firms qualify.

Years registered and assets bands

Years registered counts from the SEC registration date when the filing carries one; for firms without one, from the first month the firm appeared in the roster, and only when that month is later than the directory's first month for that registration type, so no firm is credited with a start date the data does not show. Assets bands group regulatory assets under management: under $25 million, $25 million to $100 million, $100 million to $500 million, $500 million to $1 billion, $1 billion to $5 billion, and over $5 billion, with the filed figure printed on the firm's own page.

Enhanced profiles

A firm may claim its page after verifying control of a domain the firm filed on Form ADV, and with a subscription (AdvisorCensus, the entry tier of AdvisorSEO Max, or a full AdvisorSEO Max plan) may publish an enhanced profile: a logo, a photo, a plain-language description, services, client niches, credentials from a controlled list, a booking link, social links, and a link to its website. Because enhanced profiles are paid, their links are marked as paid links for search engines. The enhanced section sits above the filed facts under the heading "Provided by the firm" and is dated. Filed facts are never altered or hidden, enhanced profiles never change where a firm appears in any list, and every publish requires the firm's attestation that the content was reviewed under its compliance program. The editor blocks performance claims, guarantees, testimonials, and superlatives.

What the directory does not do

AdvisorCensus does not verify, rate, review, rank, or recommend firms; it carries no scores, no "top" lists, no lead forms, and no advertising. Lists are alphabetical unless the reader chooses another order, and no order depends on payment. Firms may request removal of their listing through a verified process with a seven-day hold, and removed firms may be reinstated the same way. Errors in filed facts are corrected by the firm through Form ADV; errors in how the directory presents a filing are reported with the "Report an error" link on each page.

Crawlers

Any crawler may read the directory, including search engines, AI answer engines, archives such as the Internet Archive, and the services that build link previews. robots.txt asks only the index crawlers of SEO tools not to: AhrefsBot (Ahrefs), SemrushBot (Semrush), MJ12bot (Majestic), and DotBot (Moz). The files are also available as data: every list page has CSV, JSON, and Markdown versions, and llms.txt describes the site for language models.

Updates

The directory rebuilds each month after the SEC posts the new roster. New firms receive pages, withdrawn firms are removed, renamed firms keep their page at a new address with the old one redirecting, and every list page recomputes its members and counts. The changelog records each rebuild with the period ingested and the counts that changed.

AdvisorCensus methodology: Form ADV filings as of October 2026, part of AdvisorSEO Max, operated by BH Monitor Services, LLC.
https://advisorcensus.com/methodology