Bulk Company Lookup by Domain: Enrich a List in One Pass

A bulk company lookup by domain sends many website domains to a lookup service in one call and returns a company record, or a “not found”, for each. The practical workflow is: clean the list, split it into batches, send the batches, then route hits and misses separately. Batch size and billing rules vary by vendor, so read them before you start.

Why batch at all

Looking up domains one at a time is fine for ten accounts and miserable for ten thousand. A batch endpoint cuts the number of round trips and gives you ordered results, so you can zip them back onto your original rows. BusinessMCP’s company data API documents a bulk company lookup of 1 to 100 domains per call. Its reference page adds that results come back in input order, and that an unknown domain returns found: false with company: null, which makes matching straightforward.

Compare that with the free web tool on the company lookup page, which states a fair-use limit of 15 lookups per hour. That suits a handful of manual checks. It does not suit a CRM export.

Step 1: Clean the list

Most bulk jobs fail or waste money at this stage, not at the API.

1. Extract the domain. From URLs, strip protocol, path and www.. From emails, take the part after the @.
2. Lowercase everything. Acme.COM and acme.com are one company.
3. Remove free-mail and ISP domains. gmail.com, outlook.com and similar identify a provider, not an employer.
4. Deduplicate. Keep a map from domain to the original rows so you can fan results back out.
5. Check length and format. The BusinessMCP reference gives a 253-character maximum for a domain, which matches the DNS limit.

Raw value	Cleaned domain	Action
https://www.Acme.com/pricing	acme.com	Keep
[email protected]	acme.co.uk	Keep
[email protected]	none	Drop
acme.com (twice)	acme.com	Deduplicate
acme	none	Hold for manual review

Step 2: Batch and send

Split the cleaned list into chunks no larger than the vendor’s limit. For a 100-domain limit, 2,350 domains become 24 calls. Send them with a modest delay and respect the published rate limits. In the BusinessMCP reference, bulk company lookup sits among heavier tools at 60 calls per minute per key, with a general limit of 600 calls per minute per key, and a call that misses its 20-second deadline fails and is refunded. A small loop with a pause and a retry on retryable errors is enough; the curl walkthrough shows the request shape.

Do not retry a found: false. A miss is an answer, not an error. Retrying wastes calls and, depending on billing, could cost money. Retry only on responses that the API marks as retryable, such as a rate limit or a temporary upstream failure.

Key takeaway: treat the bulk run as three outputs, not one: enriched rows, genuine misses, and failed batches to retry.

Step 3: Handle the misses

Expect some. How many depends on your list, so run a pilot of a few hundred domains first and measure. Typical causes are covered in why a domain is not found. For the misses you can:

• Try the company’s main domain if the row had a regional or legacy one.
• Queue the highest-value accounts for a manual check on LinkedIn or the company’s own site.
• Leave the rest blank rather than filling with guesses. A blank is honest and filterable.

Never overwrite fields you already trust with lookup results blindly. Write enrichment into separate columns, then merge by rule, for example “fill only if currently empty”.

Step 4: Estimate the cost

Use the pilot’s hit rate. If you send N domains and a share h resolve, cost is N × h × price per found company, for a vendor that bills only on finds. At $0.02 per found company, which is BusinessMCP’s listed rate, 10,000 domains with a 60 percent hit rate would cost about $120, but that hit rate is an illustration, not a benchmark. Your number could be quite different, which is why the pilot comes first. Vendors that bill every call, or that charge per seat, need different arithmetic; see company lookup API pricing for the comparison.

New accounts at BusinessMCP get $5 of free credit for 7 days according to its pages, which at $0.02 per found company covers a pilot of up to 250 hits. Confirm the current terms before relying on that.

Step 5: Write results back safely

• Store the raw response alongside your mapped fields, with a timestamp. You will want it when someone asks why a record changed.
• Record the source name and date per enriched field.
• Keep a “not found on” date so you do not re-run the same dead domains next week.
• Spot-check a random 50 rows by hand before you push anything to a live CRM.

If the batch feeds outreach, remember the data describes companies, not people. Finding the right contact is a separate step, and the email format guide covers the company-level part of it.

When bulk is the wrong tool

If you only have company names, a domain-based lookup will not help until you have domains. BusinessMCP’s own comparison page says its lookup has no name-to-domain feature. And if what you need is new prospects rather than enrichment of known ones, a search by criteria fits better; see company search by industry and location.

A short pre-flight checklist

• Domains cleaned, lowercased, deduplicated, free-mail removed.
• Pilot of a few hundred rows run and measured.
• Batch size at or below the documented limit.
• Retry logic only for retryable errors.
• Raw responses stored with timestamps.
• Budget set from the pilot hit rate, with a spending cap on the API key if the vendor offers one.
• A human has looked at a sample before the data reaches sales.