Company Search by Industry and Location: Build Target Lists

Company search by industry and location returns a list of companies that match your filters, for example software firms in a given city, instead of a profile for one domain you already know. It is the right tool for building a prospect list from scratch, and the wrong one for enriching accounts you already hold.

Search versus lookup

	Company lookup	Company search
Starts from	A domain	Criteria such as industry and place
Returns	One profile	A list of companies
Best for	Enrichment, qualification	Prospecting, market mapping
Main risk	Misses on unknown domains	Lists that are incomplete or off-target

If you have domains, begin with a company lookup by domain. If you have only a description of the customer you want, search first and look up afterwards.

What BusinessMCP’s search offers

BusinessMCP’s company data API describes a company search that returns the same fields as a lookup, for companies matching your filters. Its stated limits and prices are:

• Up to 25 companies returned per call.
• Filters for industry (up to 80 characters), up to 5 keywords, and country and city (up to 60 characters each).
• Up to 200 exclude_domains to page through results.
• $0.01 per company returned.
• Companies whose websites are offline are excluded.

The page’s FAQ says to use exclude_domains to page through results, which means you pass the domains you have already seen to get the next set. It does not state how many companies exist per industry or place, so you cannot assume completeness.

Key takeaway: a search gives you candidates, not a census. Always check a sample of results before you build a campaign around them.

See also BusinessMCP’s pricing page for current prepaid terms.

Choosing filters that work

1. Start with country and industry. They are the least ambiguous.
2. Add a city only when location matters. Narrow filters produce short lists.
3. Use keywords for the niche. Up to five, specific rather than generic.
4. Try synonyms. Industry labels vary, so “software” and “information technology” may return different sets.
5. Exclude what you already have. Pass your customer and existing prospect domains as exclusions.

A worked example

Suppose you sell accounting software to small design agencies in one region. You search for the relevant industry label with the city, plus keywords like “branding” and “studio”. You get 25 results, review them, then exclude those 25 domains and search again for the next 25. After four calls you have about 100 candidates. At $0.01 each that is about $1 at the listed price, though your own cost depends on how many results come back.

Then you do the human part: open ten sites, check that they are agencies, and drop the ones that are not. If seven of ten are right, your filters work. If three of ten are right, tighten them.

Checking quality

• Relevance: does the company do what you searched for?
• Freshness: is the site live? The search excludes offline sites, but a live site can still belong to a dormant company.
• Duplicates: the same group may appear under several domains.
• Size: does the employee range fit your target?
• Overlap with customers: are you about to cold-pitch someone who already pays you?

After the search: enrich and prioritise

Search results already carry profile fields, but you can score them using the same fit rules described in company lookup for sales prospecting. For a larger run, move to a batch process; see bulk company lookup by domain. The free company lookup tool is a quick way to inspect a single result by hand.

Limits and honest caveats

A search tool depends on its database. BusinessMCP says its database holds about 34 million companies compiled from public sources, but small local firms and brand-new businesses are less likely to appear. Local trades are better served by business directories. If your market is niche and local, expect gaps and plan to supplement with other sources.

There is also no guarantee a company wants to hear from you. A list is not permission. Follow the rules that apply to outreach in your country; for the email side see finding a company’s email format.

When to use something else

• You have a list of names but no domains: a search will not help; you need a name-to-domain step, which BusinessMCP’s comparison page says it does not offer.
• You need funding data or investors: a private-market data source.
• You need decision-makers: a contact database, with the compliance care that implies.
• You need a handful of accounts: manual research may be faster.

A repeatable routine

1. Define the ICP in one sentence.
2. Run a search with two or three filter sets.
3. Review a sample of each set and keep the best filters.
4. Exclude existing customers and prospects.
5. Export and score.
6. Hand the top segment to sales with a note about why each account was chosen.
7. Record the search parameters and date, so you can repeat or refresh it later.

Keep the filters you used alongside the results. When someone asks in three months why an account is on the list, you will have an answer, and when you re-run the search you will find what has changed.

Example filter sets and what to expect

Goal	Filters to try	Likely issue
Local service firms in one city	Industry, city, two keywords	Small businesses may be missing
Regional software vendors	Industry, country, one niche keyword	Labels overlap with IT services
A competitor’s likely customers	Industry and keywords from their positioning	Hard to judge fit without a manual look
Companies near an office or event	City, broad industry	Lots of irrelevant results

Each of these is a starting point to refine, not a finished recipe. Run a small search first, read the results as a human would, and adjust. Two or three rounds of tuning will give you better lists than a single large run.

Cost control for searches

Because search is priced per company returned, a vague filter can return junk you pay for. Start with a narrow filter and a small number of calls. Check relevance on the first page before paging further. Set a budget per list and stop when the share of relevant results drops, which usually happens after the first few pages.