Domain Lookup Recommendations?

[tyr]

Through my company, I have access to just about every company in the US, but find that our domain data for each company often leaves a bit to be desired (if it exists). 

For small datasets, I've written some code in Excel that can give me the "I'm feeling lucky" result on a company name from Google and it works surprisingly well to find the domain of most companies. However, Google starts blocking my IP address after a dozen or so automated searches, and I'd often like to be looking up the domain on hundreds of companies.  At this point, I really wouldn't mind paying for a service. 

Do you have any recommendation for a tool that does a good job of looking up domains based on company name and address info? 

[Bryantworks]

Hey @tyr!

@jfields has an excellent idea here, and I've done it before using Gsheets and an open endpoint from Clearbit, all that's needed is your company names.  Here's the gist:

Copy this link:  

https://autocomplete.clearbit.com/v1/companies/suggest?query=

In Gsheet, use the Concatener function to fill in the "query=", for example:

https://autocomplete.clearbit.com/v1/companies/suggest?query=quora

https://autocomplete.clearbit.com/v1/companies/suggest?query=trello

https://autocomplete.clearbit.com/v1/companies/suggest?query=slack

Then in Gsheets, open Tools > Script Editor and paste this code:

function FETCH(url) {

var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);

Logger.log(response.getContentText());

var out = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

return out[0]['domain'];

}

Lastly, in an empy column, just apply the function:  FETCH (url) 

*url = the cell with your generated request.

This is from this article I found a while back.  Here's an example sheet I've created:  

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ib1AB3fHnAqRVycsTXosIZ61h3T452wL1q3r3NsEm7k/edit?usp=sharing

Hope this helps!  On another note, you can update that 'domain' to be additional fields to populate more columns if need be!

[tyr]

Hey @Bryantworks : This is definitely helpful.  I've not had a ton of luck with the quality of results I was getting with Clearbit when I tried it a year or two ago, but you're inspiring me to give it another shot and love that it's built into a google spreadsheet. 🙂 

And since everyone is being so helpful, I feel somewhat compelled to share my hack that looks up the company domain based on google's "I'm feeling lucky" search. I'm not much of a coder in VBA, but managed to cobble together a solution and you can download the excel file here: Google Company Lookup. 

As I mentioned, the biggest issue with this approach is that google will inevitably (temporarily) throttle your IP after you look up a dozen or two dozen companies using this approach. 

The benefit is that for a small number of companies, it's dumb simple and it delivers a shockingly high number of acurate results.

To use the tool, simply 1) highlight a (small) list of companies, and 2) click the large grey box. The VBA code then returns the "I'm feeling lucky" results in one column to the right. 

And I really will give Clearbit another short on the hope that it returns better results than it did last time I tried. 

[jfields]

Clearbit is one that I have seen used for similar purposes. They have some package and integration offers along with some public APIs you can use.  As long as you are using it to enhance data on contacts/companies you already have it would be a good fit for HubSpot. While they offer an integration but it may be overkill for the purpose here.  

[tyr]

jfields: Thanks for the idea around Clearbit. I didn't know they had an integration. That's really interesting. I know our IT team looked into Clearbit a year or so ago (their URL look up is free from what I remember), but they weren't impressed with the URL matching. However, I think they only ran a small test and you have me thinking it's something that we should revisit. Thanks! 

[khorne]

I second Clearbit!