Company or establishment: the unit that changes the number
A location list counts establishments, not companies. A plumbing firm with three branches is one company and three addresses, three phone lines, three dots on the map. A list of every plumber in Ohio that counts companies and one that counts establishments will not give the same number, and both can be right.
Ask which unit a number is in before you compare two quotes. We print it next to every count we give, and the official statistics do the same: the US County Business Patterns tables count establishments, by industry and down to the ZIP code.
How a location list is built
1. Name the trade and the area in one sentence. Every roofing contractor in Harris County, Texas. 2. Count it on an official table when one exists, to know what a complete file would look like. 3. Pull the establishments from map listings, which carry the address and the main phone line of each site. 4. Remove the duplicates. Map searches return a limited number of results per query, so a large area has to be split into a grid of smaller ones, and the cells overlap. The same business comes back several times. 5. Check each line: still open, still at that address, the phone still answering for that business. 6. Add a named person when you want one, from the company website or a professional profile.
The trap of this cluster: a map listing tells you a business exists, not that it is the trade you asked for. A café that sells pastries can sit next to bakeries in the results. That check is why a raw scrape and a checked list do not cost the same.
United States, by state
Each link opens our request form with the state already written. Add your trade, and we count it with you.
| Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas |
| California | Colorado | Connecticut | Delaware |
| Florida | Georgia | Hawaii | Idaho |
| Illinois | Indiana | Iowa | Kansas |
| Kentucky | Louisiana | Maine | Maryland |
| Massachusetts | Michigan | Minnesota | Mississippi |
| Missouri | Montana | Nebraska | Nevada |
| New Hampshire | New Jersey | New Mexico | New York |
| North Carolina | North Dakota | Ohio | Oklahoma |
| Oregon | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island | South Carolina |
| South Dakota | Tennessee | Texas | Utah |
| Vermont | Virginia | Washington | West Virginia |
| Wisconsin | Wyoming | District of Columbia |
What the official tables give you for any state: the number of establishments, employment and payroll by industry, down to the county and the ZIP code. More on the United States page.
United Kingdom, by nation
| Nation | Way in |
|---|---|
| England | Count my trade in England |
| Scotland | Count my trade in Scotland |
| Wales | Count my trade in Wales |
| Northern Ireland | Count my trade in Northern Ireland |
Every UK company is on the Companies House register, with its registered address and its activity code, but the register carries no phone number. And in the UK, a business call list has to be screened against two do-not-call registers before anyone dials. More on the United Kingdom page.
A city, a county, a radius
A state is often too wide. Say the area the way you would say it to a colleague: within 30 miles of Chicago, Greater London, the Gold Coast. A radius is drawn from a point, a county follows its official border, and a city may or may not include its suburbs. We tell you which one we used next to the count, because the same words can draw three different maps.
Where to go next
- All business email lists, and what a line contains.
- Lists by role or trade, when the person matters more than the place.
- Lists by company size.