Data sources / Company-published

Company websites

Public pages published by the business or a demonstrably associated brand, including service, location, ownership and corporate announcement pages. A shared name or attractive search result does not establish that association.

Last reviewed 14 October 2026 · report an error

Publisher: Various
Access: Free
Coverage: Public pages published by the business or a demonstrably associated brand, including service, location, ownership and corporate announcement pages. A shared name or attractive search result does not establish that association.
Identifiers: Domain; Page URL; Legal-name references
Freshness: varies
Official URL: Varies by publisher or jurisdiction; confirm the originating source for each record.

What it can establish

Use Company websites for a defined acquisition-research question. Match each record to the right entity using its identifiers (Domain, Page URL, Legal-name references) before accepting its contents, and keep Various's own scope and attribution on the finding.

What the identified company publicly says about its services, footprint, customers or ownership on a retained page.
Specific wording that can answer a screening question when the criterion accepts an attributed company statement as evidence.

What it cannot establish

Independent verification of claimed credentials, actual revenue mix, recurring contract quality, margins or present capacity.
Current ownership from an undated about page, or that every location and partner logo on a website lies within the acquisition perimeter.

A search that returns nothing in Company websites describes the search performed. Coverage here is public pages published by the business or a demonstrably associated brand, including service, location, ownership and corporate announcement pages, so a missing record becomes a negative finding only where that coverage reaches the company in question and the evidence standard supports the inference. Otherwise the question stays open.

How Docket uses it

Your acquisition criteria become the agents' questions. Company websites can support some of them and leave others unanswered; its freshness (varies) is weighed answer by answer and it receives no blanket reliability score.

Triage. Resolves the website against the intended business before any detailed research is paid for.
Scout. Answers the client's fixed-list criteria with typed values, each quoting a retained page verbatim.
Audit. Re-reads the retained pages with every fetch tool denied, strikes unsupported interpretations and keeps unanswered questions visible.

Scout records typed answers from a fixed list with verbatim quotations from retained pages. Audit reviews only the retained material, with every fetch tool denied. It settles supported contradictions, strikes unquotable answers and leaves gaps visible. See the research-agent method and screening criteria guide for the surrounding workflow.

Pitfalls and review questions

Service pages can describe aspiration, discontinued work or partner capability. Quote the actual statement and preserve attribution.
Domains can redirect after acquisitions while older brand pages remain live. Check the legal and ownership context before treating related pages as independent operators.

What a company's own site can establish

A company website shows how a business describes itself: services, locations, leadership names, certifications claimed, customer types, careers pages and sometimes news. It is the main source for what the company says it does, which is the starting point for matching it to a mandate. Many sites also publish structured data about the organisation in a standard vocabulary, which gives a machine-readable version of the same claims.

A site is also dated evidence. Pages change without notice, claims lapse and photographs get reused, so retain a copy at collection and consult an archive when you need to know what the page said earlier. Pair every collected statement with its address, the retrieval time and the exact words.

Collecting responsibly

Sites state their wishes to automated clients in a robots exclusion file, whose format is now an internet standard, and their terms of use may restrict collection. Follow both. Courts have addressed whether collecting public pages can violate computer-misuse statutes, with the decisions turning on authorisation, but a site's terms and technical requests remain relevant to how a careful team behaves. Read only public pages, never log in, and keep the request rate modest.

Do not treat marketing claims as verified facts. "Serving the region since 1998" is a claim; the formation date in a registry is a record. Cross-check names, addresses and licence numbers with the relevant registry, and record disagreements. Leadership pages are useful leads but are often out of date.

Illustration (fictional)

A researcher visits the site of Cardboard Comet Controls, retains the home, services and locations pages, and extracts the stated service types and five location addresses with quotations. Structured data on the home page gives a legal name different from the trading name. The researcher records both, checks the legal name in the registry, and marks the claim of 'recurring service contracts' as unsupported until a source says more.

Filings and registries

State business registries

Legal existence, registered name, entity identifier and the particular status or filing information made public by that jurisdiction.

Archives and courts

Wayback Machine

The content visible in an accessible archived capture of a particular URL at the recorded capture time.

Company-published

Job postings

That a specific role, location, skill or responsibility was advertised in the retained posting at the observed time.

Sources and further reading

Schema.org vocabulary, Schema.org. The structured markup many company websites already publish about themselves, and the cheapest correct read of a homepage.
RFC 9309 — Robots Exclusion Protocol, IETF. The standardised version of robots.txt, published in 2022 after twenty-eight years as a convention.
hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2022). On whether scraping a public profile violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The answer turns on authorisation, not on whether you used a browser.
Van Buren v. United States, Supreme Court of the United States (2021). Narrowed 'exceeds authorized access' under the CFAA to a gates-up-or-down question.
Wayback Machine, Internet Archive. The public record of what a page said on a date, when you did not retain it yourself.

These links identify research contexts to investigate, rather than conclusions about sector attractiveness. Ask how Company websites would be used on your list or return to the complete source directory.

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