Terms of Use

Agreement to these Terms

These Terms of Use are an agreement between you and Geovo Standards LLC ("Geovo," "we," "us"). They cover browsing geovo.io, using the property and certification information published on it, submitting a nomination or certification request, and any other feature described on the site.

You accept these Terms by using geovo.io. Where a form asks you to confirm agreement before submitting — for example, Request Certification or Nominate a Place — checking that box is how you accept these Terms and acknowledge our Privacy Policy for that submission.

Separate agreements

If Geovo has entered into a separate signed proposal, order form, statement of work, or certification/assessment agreement with you or your organization, that agreement — not these Terms — governs the engagement it covers, to the extent the two conflict. These Terms still apply to anything that agreement doesn't address, and to your general use of geovo.io outside that engagement.

Eligibility and authority

You must have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement. If you're using Geovo on behalf of a property, management company, or other organization, you represent that you have the authority to act for that organization and to agree to these Terms on its behalf.

What Geovo does

Geovo is an independent verification and certification standard for dog-friendly places. We review the real-world conditions behind a place's dog-friendly claims against the Geovo Standard, and grant a renewable Geovo Verified mark to places that meet it. Today that review is live for residential apartment and condo communities; other place types are planned but not yet reviewed. We also publish informational content for dog owners and property operators and maintain a public Directory of verified places.

Using Geovo, or a place being reviewed or certified by Geovo, does not make Geovo:

• a landlord, property manager, leasing agent, or real estate broker — we don't list availability, process applications, or handle leases; direct leasing questions to the property;
• an insurer, a veterinarian, or an attorney; or
• a building, structural, environmental, or accessibility-code inspector — our review is scoped to the dog-livability factors in the Geovo Standard, not to code or safety compliance.

Words like "certification," "review," "verified," and "assessment" in these Terms describe Geovo's own defined process, explained below — not a claim to any of the professional services just listed.

The Geovo Standard & assessments

The Geovo Standard (currently GEOVO-DF/1) is Geovo's own published methodology, maintained by Geovo independently of any operator, platform, or listing service. A certification review evaluates a place against the Standard's criteria for its place type. Depending on the scope of a review, the evidence behind it can include written policies, public-facing claims, site information and photographs, operational procedures, staff input, and observed conditions — only what's actually gathered for that review.

A review reflects the property's conditions and the information available at the time of that review. Geovo doesn't continuously monitor a certified property between reviews — that's what the renewal cycle described in Geovo Verified is for.

Independence from payment

Certification fees cover the cost of an independent review, not a particular outcome. Paying for a review doesn't guarantee Geovo Verified status, a particular finding, or favorable treatment in any Geovo content.

Geovo Verified

Geovo Verified means that, based on Geovo's then-current Standard, methodology, and review process, a place met the applicable certification criteria at the time of its most recent review, and that its status is current. Concretely, the mark claims three things: the place was reviewed against the Standard, its status is current, and verification information about it is public.

A review can end one of three ways: Geovo Verified; an improvement roadmap, where material gaps exist; or not currently eligible, where the place type or conditions fall outside what the Standard can verify.

Geovo Verified is not, and shouldn't be read as:

• a government approval, license, or legal-compliance certification;
• a safety certification or insurance;
• a guarantee that any particular dog, renter, or household will have a specific experience; or
• a promise about a property's future pet fees, pet rent, breed or size restrictions, amenities, management decisions, lease terms, or neighborhood conditions.

Renewal and reassessment

Verified status carries a renewal requirement on a defined cycle. If a property doesn't renew, status lapses and display rights end. Material changes — new ownership, a new policy, degraded conditions — can trigger a reassessment before the scheduled renewal. Geovo may also update its verification criteria, request updated information from a property, or suspend or withdraw Verified status for reasons including inaccurate information, materially changed conditions or policies, misuse of the Geovo Verified mark, or failure to meet current criteria at renewal.

Using the Geovo Verified mark

A property with current Verified status has a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable permission to display the applicable Geovo Verified mark for that property only, for as long as status remains current, subject to any usage guidelines we provide. This permission ends automatically if status lapses or is withdrawn. The mark can't be used for a different property, altered, used to imply a broader endorsement than Geovo has actually given, or used in misleading advertising. Misuse may result in removal of display rights and, where necessary, public correction.

Property information

Information behind a Geovo listing or assessment may come from a property's own representatives, Geovo's own review of the property, publicly available sources, and nominations submitted by the public.

Property information changes — pet rent, deposits, fees, weight, breed, or number limits, amenity availability, leasing policies, management, and similar details can all change after a review or after we publish something. We make reasonable efforts to keep what we publish useful and current, but it may not reflect a property's status at the exact moment you view it.

Geovo is a discovery and research resource, not a substitute for your own diligence. Before signing a lease or making a financial commitment, verify anything material to your decision — pet fees, deposits, restrictions, and availability — directly with the property, and read your lease and any pet addendum.

Pet policies & assistance animals

The Geovo Standard and Geovo Verified status address ordinary pet policies — fees, breed, size, or number restrictions, amenities, and similar terms a property applies to pets generally.

Service animals and other assistance animals used as a disability accommodation are a different, legally distinct category. Service animal access is a legal right and stands apart from a property's dog-friendly policy — a property's ordinary pet policy, including pet fees, deposits, and breed or size restrictions, generally doesn't apply to a legally qualifying assistance animal. As part of the Standard, a certification review checks that a property's staff understand this distinction; it doesn't determine, on behalf of any individual, whether a specific animal or accommodation request qualifies under applicable law.

Geovo doesn't provide legal advice about disability accommodations. If you need to know your rights, or a property's obligations, regarding an assistance animal, consult the property directly, the applicable housing authority, or a qualified attorney. We don't ask you to tell us about a disability or an assistance-animal need through our forms, and you shouldn't send us that information.

Your responsibilities

You may browse geovo.io and use its information for lawful, legitimate purposes, and submit nominations or certification requests in good faith.

If you submit information for a property

If you submit information on behalf of a property or organization — for example, through a certification request — you represent that the information you provide is accurate to your knowledge, that you have authority to act for that organization, and that you won't impersonate another entity or intentionally provide misleading information. Submitting information doesn't give you or your organization ownership or control over Geovo's page for that property, our editorial content, our independent observations, or our methodology.

Prohibited uses

Using Geovo, you agree not to:

• violate any law or the rights of others;
• misrepresent your identity or authority, or impersonate another person, business, or property;
• submit knowingly false or misleading property information;
• interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to bypass the security of geovo.io, or introduce malware or attempt unauthorized access to our systems or data;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-extract content or data from geovo.io beyond ordinary, permitted search-engine indexing — see Intellectual property;
• attempt to manipulate a certification review or Geovo Verified outcome through fraud, misrepresentation, or pressure directed at Geovo or its reviewers;
• misuse the correction process described below to suppress accurate information rather than to correct an inaccuracy;
• misuse the Geovo name, logo, or Verified mark beyond what these Terms permit; or
• use Geovo to violate someone else's privacy, intellectual property, or other rights.

Property corrections

If you represent a property and believe factual information Geovo has published about it is inaccurate — an outdated fee, a changed restriction, or incorrect contact information, for example — tell us. Use our Contact form ("Report inaccurate property information") or email scott@geovo.io with what's inaccurate and how you know. We review credible correction requests and may correct factual errors, using reasonable discretion.

Submitting a correction request isn't a guarantee of a particular result. It doesn't guarantee immediate removal, a change to Geovo Verified status, or a change to Geovo's independent editorial assessment — and disagreeing with a Geovo finding is different from identifying a factual error. Geovo determines its own certification methodology and outcomes; a property or its representatives can submit factual corrections as described here, but don't control our independent review, findings, or Verified status, and can't purchase a particular outcome (see The Geovo Standard & assessments).

Submissions

Through Nominate, Request Certification, Contact, and similar forms, you may submit information about a place, an organization, or yourself (a "Submission"). You'll only submit information you have the right to provide, and won't submit a Submission that is unlawful, knowingly false, fraudulent, threatening, harassing, defamatory, privacy-invasive, infringing, or that contains malware or spam.

You grant Geovo a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, format, and use your Submission as reasonably necessary to operate, evaluate, and respond to it, and to consider it as part of a certification review or the Directory. This doesn't give Geovo ownership of your Submission, and doesn't apply to information Geovo already has independent rights to use, like our own review findings.

Geovo may review, decline to act on, or remove a Submission at its discretion, and isn't obligated to publish or act on every Submission it receives.

Intellectual property

geovo.io, the Geovo name and logo, the Geovo Verified mark, the Geovo Standard, our certification findings and assessments, our property descriptions, our compiled Directory, and the site's design, software, and underlying database structure are owned by Geovo or our licensors and protected by applicable intellectual property laws. "Geovo" and "Geovo Verified" are trademarks of Geovo Standards LLC. We don't claim ownership of facts themselves, or of content a property representative supplies beyond the license described in Submissions.

We grant you a limited license to browse and use geovo.io for its intended purpose — as a renter or dog owner researching a place, or as a property representative interacting with Geovo about your property. We grant no other rights.

Automated access and data extraction

Except for ordinary indexing by a search engine consistent with our robots.txt, or a person manually browsing and reading geovo.io, you may not, without Geovo's prior written permission:

• scrape, crawl, spider, or harvest content or data from geovo.io in bulk or by automated means;
• copy or reproduce our Directory, certification findings, or underlying database in whole or substantial part;
• use automated means to extract data from geovo.io for a competing product or service;
• use Geovo's content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate a machine-learning or AI model;
• resell, republish, or commercially redistribute Geovo's content or data; or
• reverse-engineer or circumvent an access control on geovo.io.

Third-party & location information

Geovo may reference or link to third-party information — a property's own website or listings, mapping and location data, public records, or other third-party sources. Geovo doesn't control third-party websites or services, and isn't responsible for their content, accuracy, or availability; third-party information can change without our knowledge.

Where geovo.io shows maps, distances, or neighborhood and location information, that information may be approximate and based on third-party data. Geovo doesn't guarantee route accessibility, sidewalk conditions, off-leash legality, park conditions, or the real-time availability of any location shown.

Disclaimers & liability

Disclaimers

geovo.io and its content — including property information, the Geovo Standard, certification findings, and Verified status — are provided "as is" and "as available," to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. We don't warrant that geovo.io will be uninterrupted, error-free, or completely current; that any property information or finding is complete or free of error; that a Verified property will meet your specific needs or your dog's needs; or that using Geovo will result in a particular leasing outcome. Nothing here disclaims a warranty or right that can't be disclaimed under applicable law.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Geovo and its officers, employees, and agents won't be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost data, arising from your use of geovo.io or reliance on property information, a certification finding, or Verified status — even if we've been advised of the possibility. Some jurisdictions don't allow the exclusion of certain damages, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Indemnification

If you submit information to Geovo on behalf of a property or organization, you agree to indemnify and hold Geovo harmless, to the extent permitted by applicable law, from claims arising out of that information, your lack of authority to provide it, your infringement of another's rights, or your misuse of Geovo's marks or services.

Disputes, governing law & changes

Governing law

These Terms are governed by U.S. law, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, to the extent enforceable. Where mandatory consumer-protection law in your jurisdiction gives you rights these Terms can't waive, those rights still apply.

Resolving a dispute

If you have a dispute with Geovo, we'd like the chance to resolve it directly first — email scott@geovo.io. These Terms don't currently require arbitration or limit your ability to bring a claim in court.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as Geovo's practices or services change. We'll update the "Last updated" date above when we do. For a change that materially affects your rights under an existing certification or business engagement with Geovo, we'll provide notice or, where appropriate, ask you to reaccept before it applies to that engagement. Continued use of geovo.io after a change means the updated Terms apply to your ongoing use.

Suspension; survival

Geovo may restrict, suspend, or deny access to geovo.io or a feature of it for violating these Terms, fraud, abuse, security risk, or unlawful use, without advance notice where reasonably necessary. Geovo Verified display rights end automatically if status lapses or is withdrawn, as described in Geovo Verified. Provisions that by their nature should survive — intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and this section — survive any end to your use of geovo.io.

General

These Terms, our Privacy Policy, and any separate signed agreement between you and Geovo make up the entire agreement between us for what they cover. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Geovo's failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; Geovo may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Headings are for convenience only.