Company products

The Company products (company_products) filter enables you to discover companies based on the products and / or services they offer.

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Note

The API is designed to discover companies that provide a specific product or service. The response will include information about a single product or service, that best matches your search criteria, with the purpose of showcasing the company capabilities.

If your use-case requires exploring the full list of products or services offered by the company, we have a separate solution that can support this scenario. Please contact your dedicated sales representative for more information.

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Note

Products and services provided by companies are extracted using ML models and algorithms developed in-house by Veridion.


Veridion Supplier Universe

The API searches a subset of the entire Veridion company universe. We call this segment the Veridion Supplier Universe.

The Veridion Supplier Universe includes B2B manufacturers, distributors, and service providers from around the world. We have created this universe by using Machine Learning models developed internally with the purpose of understanding what the company does.

For this particular scenario, the company's website is our primary source of information and the most relevant one. Our approach involves directly accessing the primary source and extracting the exact product and service information shared by the company.

Companies adopt various methods for organizing information about their products and services on their websites:

  • They follow an online store pattern, grouping product pages under categories and presenting them hierarchically.
  • They display all their products on a single page.
  • Some companies choose an unstructured approach, mentioning products and services on their homepage or on the 'About Us' page.

We are able to isolate the specific pages on a company's website that feature their products or services, regardless of the format in which the information is presented.

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Product / Service pages

A product / service page is any page on a company's website that includes a mention about the offered product or service.

Such pages can be dedicated product pages, organized in a hierarchy (e.g. shopify-like structure), but also the Homepage or About-Us page of the website, for smaller companies.

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Note

Currently the Veridion Universe includes only manufacturers and distributors of B2B physical products, together with B2B service providers.

We do plan to include Software Products (e.g. SaaS, APIs etc.) soon, so stay tuned for updates!

Products / Services search sources

The filtering process involves searching through various Veridion product and company related data points.

We isolate the product and / or service name, descriptions (including listed specifications, such as product characteristics), along with other available HTML metadata on the page. This combined data, along with a selected list of company Veridion attributes ( e.g. business tags and descriptions ), serve as the sources or data points searched by the API.


Search modes

Expression match

The Company products filter value is modelled as an expression containing a set of instructions.

Syntax of an expression

  1. An expression must include exactly one match block (terms to be matched) (mandatory)
  2. An expression can include exactly one exclude block (terms to be excluded from the search) (optional)
  3. In turn, both match and exclude blocks consist of one or more operator and operands blocks:
    • The operator can only take two values: and and or
    • The operands can either be a list of search terms or a list of operator and operands blocks, allowing for nested queries and more complex search use cases.

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Note

When operands are grouped by an and rule, it indicates that every single operand is mandatory, meaning all of them must be matched for a response to be returned.

Conversely, with the or rule, any of the operands can be matched for a response to be returned.

For example, the filter below searches for companies that produce biopharmaceutical products, and do not engage in retail operations:

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "or",
      "operands": [
        "biopharma",
        "biopharmaceutical",
        "biopharmaceuticals"
      ]
    },
    "exclude": {
      "operator": "or",
      "operands": [
        "retail"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Search terms

A search term can be defined as:

  • a single word, like biopharma
  • an exact phrase, like biopharma solutions

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Note

Please keep in mind that exact phrases are searched exactly as they are provided in the input.

For example, given the exact phrase biopharma solutions, the API will identify a text passage like biopharma solutions & more.

However, Solutions for your biopharma business would not be recognized as a match. To enable this type of matching, please consult the Complex expressions section below.

Grouping search terms

The or operator allows you to specify alternatives to the terms within a group. This is important when you need to optimize for results volume, as different companies might refer to the same concept in a slightly different way. For example, some companies might mention biopharma , others might call it biopharmaceutical, or use the plural formbiopharmaceuticals.

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Tip

Adding variations to your search terms will also help increase the accuracy of the results.

Due to how the results Sorting Mechanism works, if multiple terms are matched for the same company, that company will be prioritized in the result list as being more relevant to your search.

The and operator is useful when you need to enforce the presence of multiple search terms or search groups.

For example, you need to identify companies that provide biopharmaceuticals, but produce vaccines in particular. You can create this search by specifying both biopharmaceuticals and vaccine search terms, wrapped in an and operator:

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "and",
      "operands": [
        "biopharmaceuticals",
        "vaccine"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Complex expressions

Complex expressions are useful when you need to cover a broader set of criteria for your search or define a more complex concept ( for which you would need to use sets of keywords instead of a single word).

The Veridion API empowers advanced searches that allow for combining terms to encompass product names (like "superalloys"), product specifications/characteristics (such as "sheet"), manufacturing processes (like "age hardening"), and company capabilities (such as "custom manufacturing" or "turnkey").

When appropriate, this criteria can be grouped using individual operands. For example, the following filter searches for "Companies that deliver superalloys as sheets, use the age hardening method in their manufacturing, and supply custom manufacturing services":

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "and",
      "operands": [
        {
          "operator": "or",
          "operands": [
            "superalloy",
            "superalloys",
            "super alloy",
            "super alloys"
          ]
        },
        {
          "operator": "or",
          "operands": [
            "sheet",
            "sheets"
          ]
        },
        {
          "operator": "or",
          "operands": [
            "age hardening"
          ]
        },
        {
          "operator": "or",
          "operands": [
            "custom",
            "turnkey",
            "OEM",
            "build to print"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Strictness level

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Note

By default, the Company products filter searches all of the available Product sources ( default strictness: 3 )

You can control which fields get searched during filtering by changing the value of the strictness parameter:

  • strictness set to: 1 - highest level of strictness, lower number of results.
    Using this setting, the API searches a limited set of attributes that we have identified as being particularly valuable in terms of generating accurate results. These attributes refer to the product headline, the product page's HTML meta information, and a selection of relevant company details. Since this is the strictest search level, it will generate the least amount of results, with the benefit of increased accuracy.
  • strictness set to: 2 - medium strictness, moderate number of results.
    The API will split the product and company-related attributes into two groups based on a level of trust associated with each attribute, from a product extraction perspective. It will first search using the less trusted attributes to create a pool of candidates. It will then validate the candidates based on the most trusted attributes. This level of strictness will balance the number of results and accuracy.
  • strictness set to: 3 - lowest strictness, highest number of results.
    The API will search a comprehensive list of product and company-related information and meta-information extracted from the HTML product and company pages. Being the most permissive setting, it will yield the greatest number of results, while the accuracy might slightly decrease towards the tail of the results list. This serves as the default strictness level when no specific parameter value is passed.

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Tip

Although defining a value for the strictness parameter is optional, doing so can be very effective in fine-tuning your results.

For example, the filter below searches for companies that mention biopharmaceutical products, with a strictness level of 2:

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "or",
      "operands": [
        "biopharma",
        "biopharmaceutical",
        "biopharmaceuticals"
      ]
    }
  },
  "strictness": 2
}

Supplier types

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Note

By default, the Company products filter searches the entire Veridion Supplier Universe . This means that your results can include manufacturers, distributors and service providers at the same time.

You can use the supplier_types parameter to target your search by passing in one or more categories of product or service suppliers.

The currently accepted values for this parameter are: "manufacturer", "distributor", and "service_provider".

For example, if you are searching for "biopharmaceuticals manufacturers and distributors", you would input ["manufacturer", "distributor"] as the supplier_types:

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "or",
      "operands": [
        "biopharma",
        "biopharmaceutical",
        "biopharmaceuticals"
      ]
    }
  },
  "strictness": 2,
  "supplier_types": [
    "manufacturer",
    "distributor"
  ]
}

If you're looking for B2B service providers, please make sure to specify service_provider in the supplier_types array. For example, the following filter will return all companies that provide B2B legal services:

{
  "attribute": "company_products",
  "relation": "match_expression",
  "value": {
    "match": {
      "operator": "or",
      "operands": [
        "Employment Law"
      ]
    }
  },
  "strictness": 1,
  "supplier_types": [
    "service_provider"
  ]
}

⚠️ Restrictions

Please be aware of the following constraints when using the Company products filter in conjunction with other filters:

  • The company_products filter cannot be enclosed within an or wrapper.

This precaution is taken to prevent mixed result types. This means that queries related to products should return results containing product-related information, while non-product queries should not include product fields in their results.

  • The placement of the company_products filter must always be at the root level of the filters object, positioned directly under the first and rule.

This practice is instrumental in clarifying intent (e.g., "I'm seeking manufacturing companies") and mitigating any potential conflicts between filters.


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Reference

To view all available filter relations and accepted types, please check the Filter Relations section.