Business databases: three kinds and what each is for
Auspector ·
“Business database” covers three different products: company registry data (legal entities), B2B contact databases (people at companies, with job titles and work emails) and local business data (places, with category, address, phone and website). Each answers a different question, and the costly mistake is buying one when you needed another.
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The three kinds
| Kind | One record is | Typical fields | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company registry data | A legal entity | Name, registration number, registered address, legal form, date | Banking, compliance, credit, formation services | Rarely a phone; registered address is not the trading address |
| B2B contact database | A person at a company | Name, job title, work email, employer | Selling to mid-size and large companies by role | Personal-data rules; people change jobs |
| Local business data | A place | Name, category, address, phone, website, coordinates | Selling to shops, restaurants, trades; field sales | Fill rates vary by market and by field |
The difference between the first and third kind — a company versus a place — is covered in newly registered vs newly opened.
Five questions to ask any provider
- What does one record represent — a company, a person or a place? A chain with forty branches is one company and forty places.
- What is the fill rate of the field you need, in the market you need? Ten million records with a 20% phone fill rate are two million phone numbers.
- Is the count measured or estimated? A full count over the database and a number extrapolated from a sample are not the same promise.
- What does “fresh” mean? When was each record collected, and how do new businesses get in?
- What happens on a removal request? Is it permanent, or until the next rebuild?
Where Auspector fits
Auspector is local business data plus a daily feed of newly opened businesses, with company registry records for 14 countries. Our own answers to the first four: one record is one place; fill rates for every territory are on the public coverage report; every figure is a full count, not a sample (how we measure); new businesses are added every day (freshness). There are no email addresses and no named people — the full list of columns is on what is in a record.
If your customers are small, local businesses, a place-based database is the one that has their phone numbers. How to find the ones that just opened is in how to find newly opened businesses.