Something briefly alluded to above that I’d like to bring into focus: chances are that a title company is not doing a full exhaustive title search when you buy a property, because they’ve usually already done it. In the area where I bought a house (Napa county), the main title company was a local firm that had their own extensive files dating back to their founding decades ago (possibly a hundred years). Any land sale in Napa county had probably passed through their hands at some point, and they made an effort to keep their files up to date at all times. If you go to the clerk’s office every day, the few additions to the files weren’t so hard to track down.
Even in more heavily populated areas, the title company probably has an older abstract on file that they just need to update.
A full exam back to the US government’s patent is hardly ever necessary as most parcels have had title policies done on them. The title company merely has to examine the title since the last policy was issued. As I alluded to before, even if a parcel never had a policy issued, it is probably part of a larger tract which was subdivided or partitioned and a policy issued on a different division of it. When the company searches the title for that parcel, it makes for internal purposes a “tract opinion” or “search finding” for the parcel before title was separated. Nonetheless, I often had to go back to day one when I worked for CT&T Co years ago in Cook Co., and when I worked downstate in a regional office no such tract opinions were done. The staff consisted of a few persons who used a local abstract company’s abstracts. One title examiner (me when I worked in the Springfield office) would drive to all the counties serviced by that regional office. In addition, title insurance was not often used there then. Usually when a title policy was requested, there was probably some problem with the title. The abstracts had to be examined from the beginning - and very carefully.
And our title companies will usually give a discount if they issued a policy on the same property once before. I don’t know if they will do that if some other company issued it.