The National Criminal Database Search is the best search to start your background check but it should never be the only search ran. The issue with this report is that it’s not a very thorough search. There are twelve privately owned criminal databases across the country. Each database decides which sources to gather information from and how often they want to update the information. As a Consumer Reporting Agency, we have to decide which databases will give us the most up to date information because this is where we start our search.