Hi Pcapps!
By mentioning the phrase "ticker symbol", I assume that you would like
to find companies in the USA.
It is very difficult to obtain a full and comprehensive list - simply
because of the vast number of them, so ideally you should contact your
equivalent of our Companies House [ http://www.companies-house.gov.uk
] which we use as a central business register in the United Kingdom.
and try to obtain the information from there.
I did spend quite a few hours searching the various government
agencies and databases but didn't have much luck tracking down a
central register, the Department of Commerce simply linked to smaller
departments for each individual state.
However, there are a few online resources which you can use to obtain
information for a few hundred thousand popular companies.
A good example would be Hoovers [ http://www.hoovers.com ], which has
a huge list online with address and Nasdaq information included.
Have a look at the following example which is the start of an A-Z list
of companies on Hoovers : [
http://www.hoovers.com/company/dir/0,2116,15327,00.html ], if you
click on "Capsule", you will find their address information and many
other resources, if you click on "Financial", you will get their
ticker symbol. The full profile reports are understandably
subscription only.
The same list is also available here sorted by industry type : [
http://www.hoovers.com/feature/block/detail/0,2417,18_1757,00.html ].
I found a few interesting directories, one of which specialized in
Canada called "Scotts Info" [ http://www.scottsinfo.com ] and
contained the quote :"...Contact over 115,000 Canadian companies with
up to 210,000 executive contacts..."; of course, the fantastic
InfoSpace [ http://www.infospace.com ] contains a massive list of
companies which are also searchable by category : [
http://ypng.infospace.com/info/ypv3/topcats.htm? ]
At the risk of turning this answer into a collection of links, I also
suggest you look at the pages contained within the Google Directory
here : [ http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Directories/Address_and_Phone_Numbers/Yellow_Pages/
].
If you want to pay for a list, things are a little more simple - you
may already know of the Forbes lists [ http://www.forbes.com/home_usa/
], who provide the professional paid service like the ones here : [
http://www.forbes.com/qpass/forsale ] which is sectioned into Private
and Public etc.
I believe that although you could use this information for your
purposes, I suggest that you contact them first at [
webmaster@forbes.com ] to make sure that you are allowed to use their
data.
You may also find these links useful :
InfoUSA
[ http://www.infousa.com ]
Corporate Information
[ http://www.corporateinformation.com ]
Super Pages
[ http://www.bigbook.com ]
Business.com
[ http://www.business.com ]
Lycos Small Business Research
[ http://business.lycos.com/companyresearch/crtop.asp ]
Yellow Pages (USA)
[ http://www.yellowbook.com ]
Google Directory of Company Information
[ http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Major_Companies/Company_Information/?tc=1
]
As I mentioned before, a full list of smaller companies is going to be
a tough job which could take a researcher a good week or so to find
because only the larger ones are mentioned or held in databases so you
should contact the Department of Commerce at [ webmaster@doc.gov ] or
the Small Business Administration at [ answerdesk@sba.gov
] to find out where the central records are stored.
Hope this helps you out,
errol-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
pcapps-ga
on
22 Jul 2002 14:22 PDT
Thank you for your time. I already know about the places you
mentioned, like Hoovers (D&B is another very good one), but none of
these guys offers a list of company names that you can just download
and freely distribute, even without all the value add stuff they put
in. Most of the places you mention obviously have the info in their
database, but I need it (just the names and ticker symbols) in my
database. It doesn't do me a lot of good to be able to look up a
company, as they allow, I need to download the list.
As a second point of clarification, any list I'm looking for does not
need to be comprehensive. There are 13 million businesses in the US.
I would be happy with the top 10,000 Public and top 10,000 Private and
some of the top non-profit companies.
The key is there needs to be a simple way to download the list to my
machine.
|
Clarification of Answer by
errol-ga
on
23 Jul 2002 12:24 PDT
Hello again, Pcapps!
I have spent a long time searching through every available resource
and can conclude that the information that you require *is* available
but not in the format that you require without paying for it.
Let me give an example - the pages of information at Report Gallery [
http://www.reportgallery.com ] are exactly what you require in that
they are a list of the most popular public companies, however the only
way to store these lists on your computer is by the rather crude
method of saving each individual page as a HTML file and compiling it
into an archive offline.
I am confident that I have thoroughly exhausted every avenue of
obtaining this information by use of the Internet and have come to the
following conclusions :
- The information is not available for free via FTP download or any
other file transfer method from a public database without becoming a
suscriber first.
- Any information you do find on a Web site will be freely
redistributable due to the fact that data such as Company name, Stock
Market symbol and business type (public/private/non-profit) is public
information.
- Most of the data such as that provided by Forbes and Info-USA is
only available in the format you need (e.g. download or hard copy) if
you make a payment to their company.
You may be interested to know which search methods I used in an
attempt to locate the information for you.
The methods included Internet search engines (Google, Ask.co.uk,
Hotbot and many financial specialist ones), Usenet - I posted a
request yesterday to several newsgroups such as alt.business,
alt.business.telemarketing, misc.business.marketing.moderated and
misc.business.records-mgmt (but had little response other than what we
know already) and telephoned Companies House in the UK earlier today,
who apart from being a little un-helpful, suggested that the
information should be sourced from the Department of Trade and
Industry.
I have included links to the new resources I recently discovered :
All Stocks
[ http://www.allstocks.com/NASDAQ ]
A large list of public companies sorted by Ticker Symbol.
Forbes
[ http://www.forbes.com/lists/results.jhtml?passListId=21&passYear=2001&passListType=Company&resultsStart=1&resultsHowMany=25&resultsSortProperties=%2Bnumberfield1%2C%2Bstringfield1&resultsSortCategoryName=rank
]
Forbes' largest 500 private companies.
Report Galley
[ http://www.reportgallery.com/content/main_aak.htm ]
List of several thousand public companies with Ticker Symbols.
Lycos Business
[ http://business.lycos.com/companyresearch/crtop.asp ]
InfoUSA business research.
I hope this helps with your enquiries.
regards,
errol-ga.
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