It appears that some abstractors really do a far "reach" but  some counties, like Fort Bend in TX have a very excellent online data base. And it's free. They are current up to within 3 days consistently and now their records are all online and it is even hard to search any other way.  We only do the counties we can physically go to easily and within our time frame--however it is very helpful to do some work on line in order to do enough orders to make a living.  When companies seem to stress  SPEED rather than accuracy and only will send work to those who can produce that quick turnaround...they are very remiss in not emphasing ACCURACY over getting that report back within 6 hrs.!!  And at some time will pay the price in bad reporting. That never ceases to amaze me.  Just today I was asked to do a current owner search in a county that is 54 miles one-way and "could we receive that in the next hour? or our client may cancel the order"!! AAARRUUGGHHH...are they kidding or just have no concept  of getting in a car, driving 52 miles plus each way, do the search in hand written index books and then write the report/ etc etc.  Makes us all a little crazy, huh? She actually told me it didn't look THAT far on the map!  And by the way, this was at 3pm when she called from California. And they are the very company that constantly asks us to lower our pricing.  So, I ditto your "HELLO?"!!!
Every company should require that their people spend at least one week in the field with an abstrator before they start placing orders to vendors. I know of one national company that has done that. Amazing how logical their title vendor managers are...