The API's goal is to resolve your input to the right real-world company: not just find a name that matches, but identify the correct entity and return a verified, enriched profile for it.
This brings a series of challenges. Real-world company data is messy: names are abbreviated or misspelled, websites belong to parent companies rather than local subsidiaries or are simply wrongly associated, registry records reference companies that have since been renamed or acquired, and sometimes the only information available is a brand name with no obvious legal entity behind it. The API is built to handle all of this, and to tell you exactly how it arrived at its answer.
How resolution works
Resolution is the process of mapping your input to the right company. Some of the most common real-world scenarios that the API handles are:
1. Companies with aligned legal and operational presence
The most common case. The company is registered and operates in the same jurisdiction. The API returns a unified profile combining legal and operational details.
2. Companies registered in one jurisdiction, operating in another
A company may be incorporated in Delaware but run its operations from New York, or registered in Luxembourg while operating across Europe. How much is returned depends on what can be verified:
- When the connection between the legal and operational entity is clear (for example the Delaware entity is the direct parent of the New York operating business), the API returns both the legal record and the operational details.
- When the operating company also has some presence in the registration jurisdiction, the API treats this as sufficient confirmation and returns both dimensions together.
- When the legal entity is a shell with no confirmed link to an active operating company, only the legal record is returned.
- When the legal registration cannot be fully verified in the stated jurisdiction but the operating company demonstrably runs its business there, the API falls back to the operational presence as the confirming signal.
3. Companies with a limited online footprint
Some entities, such as local subsidiaries of large groups, sole practitioners, or financial vehicles such as holding companies, have limited publicly available information at a local level. For these companies, the returned profile may be leaner than usual, covering any available details such as a registered address, a phone number, a business category, or a brief company description.
4. Brand names or business division input
Operational inputs may refer to a brand name or business division that sits within a larger corporate structure: a commercially well-known identity that belongs to a broader group. Inputs like "Siemens Healthineers", "Bosch Rexroth", or "Google" are recognisable as distinct commercial identities, but a single commercial name can correspond to multiple entities across different geographies, making group-level context essential to returning the right one.
- When multiple entities exist in the same geography: the API selects the most representative one, preferring the Global or Regional HQ for that geography.
- When no geography is specified: the API resolves to the Global HQ. For example, Google combined with google.com resolves to Google LLC, headquartered in Mountain View, California.
- When no dedicated entity can be identified: the API acknowledges what it understood the input to refer to through its explainability layer, without returning a specific company result.
5. Companies identified through group presence in a geography
Large groups frequently operate in a market through entities whose trading name looks nothing like the parent brand. The API uses corporate group connections to surface the right local entity, even when there is no direct name match between the requested entity and the result.
This means that querying a well-known group name combined with a geography may return a local entity with a completely different trading name — which is the correct and intended result. For example, querying LVMH + Romania returns Somarest SRL, confirmed as the entity through which LVMH operates in that market.
6. Companies that have changed identity over time
The API handles renamed, rebranded, merged, and dissolved companies. It resolves the historical identity first, then traces continuity forward to the current entity where one exists. For example, querying KEMET CORP with kemet.com returns Yageo Group, the company that acquired Kemet.
7. Multiple similar companies exist for the given input
When the input is generic or too broad i.e. a common name, or just a name and a country with no stronger identifying signal, the API returns up to five ranked candidates rather than making an arbitrary choice, ordered by how closely each one matches the input and other available signals.
How the API Weighs What You Send
The quality and completeness of a result depends not just on what you send in, but on how the API interprets and weighs the signals you provide. Returned matches are refined through methodologies that account for:
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Completion and accuracy of provided input:
- e.g. if the input includes an incomplete address ( for example, only Country ) , the API will rely more on additional information ( for example the company name and/or a website/phone number, if provided ) to return a better match.
- Similarly, if the API detects a website has been wrongly associated with the rest of company details, it will optimize for matching against provided company name and address
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Relevance of matched input attribute: e.g. Website or Registry ID matches can be more relevant than Company Name matches, due to the uniqueness of these values across the entire data domain
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Match types: e.g. Company Name Exact matches are typically stronger than Fuzzy Matches, unless additional information is present and matched
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Match sources: e.g. Information extracted from a Company Website can be more reliable than Social media information
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Group context as a disambiguation signal:
- When multiple candidates exist, corporate group membership is used as an additional signal to narrow the field and prefer the most representative active entity.
- When multiple candidates exist, corporate group membership is used as an additional signal to narrow the field and prefer the most representative active entity.
How to analyze a match
Each returned company profile includes a detailed explainability layer, telling you how the result was resolved, why it was selected, and how closely it matches your input. Please refer to the How to analyze a match section for more information.