Business Owner Validation


5

If I were to start a business listing, and I want business owners to be able to signup for the service and edit/update their listing, what's the best way to validate that a person that calls is indeed the owner of the business?

Business

asked Apr 10 '10 at 00:48
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Brian Wigginton
166 points
Top digital marketing agency for SEO, content marketing, and PR: Demand Roll

5 Answers


2

There is no easy way to do this.

You could ask for their company web site address and their email address. If the email address domain does not match the web site, you might have a problem.

answered Apr 10 '10 at 01:46
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Gary E
12,510 points
  • Great simple idea! There may be a problem with smaller businesses that don't have a domain or company email addresses, but for the majority it's an excellent method! – Brian Wigginton 14 years ago

2

  1. For Sole Proprietors, the common practice is to have them send a copy of their local business license. It confirms them as a legitimate, active business owner.
  2. For Corporations, who is the 'owner' you are looking for? CEO, President, a majority share holder? Whatever position you are looking to validate, it won't be difficult for them to send you satisfactory evidence of their position.
answered Apr 10 '10 at 01:30
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Keith De Long
5,091 points
  • i think using your points and Gary's idea would be great. Verification could be done thru emails. – Vnchopra 14 years ago
  • I agree, combined would be a very simple and easy method of authenticating a business representative. Unfortunately, some smaller businesses may not have a domain or company addresses. In that case I suppose Keith's proposed method would work. – Brian Wigginton 14 years ago

1

US or global? Do you need the actual owner (with the understanding that there may not be a clear majority owner), or just someone who works in the company and has some authority?

I think the method used by Google Apps is the one simplest to automate and scale globally -- require them to make a unique change to their domain's DNS, or upload a file to their website.

Depending on your state, there might be a electronic registry you can purchase a subscription for. I don't know about Texas, but in Denmark the governments "Commerce and Companies Agency" maintains an electronic database of all company registrations which you can subscribe to. Additionally, some providers of yellow pages have enriched versions of the same data available for subscription.

Side note 1: If I was contacted out of the blue, and asked to fax a number of papers to verify ownership, in order to gain access to a webpage... I would almost certainly not agree to that.

Side note 2: Be careful about publicizing information about companies without their consent. See the Get Satisfaction debacle...

answered Apr 10 '10 at 02:43
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Jesper Mortensen
15,292 points

1

Google Maps and other local maps services with business listings just call the phone number provided in the business listing: http://maps.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=21029&topic=21034

answered Apr 10 '10 at 03:08
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Jay Neely
6,050 points

0

I think Brian is on to a pretty cool idea. If you want to have business owners list their businesses on a website(after you have attracted them to your website), I think using both Keith DeLong's idea and Gary E's idea and combining these two would be great.

And if there were a problem with the email address matching, what you could do is send a confirmation email to that email, and if it's accepted then you can have that email address and the business listed.

You could probably implement Keith's first point after they have signed up and listed themselves that way.

answered Apr 10 '10 at 17:13
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Vnchopra
418 points
  • I agree, right now this seems to be the best, most automated way to be able to verify business owners. – Brian Wigginton 14 years ago

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