Ohio Secretary of State Business Search Scraper

Look up Ohio companies in the Secretary of State business register. Search by business name, by registered agent, or by entity number, and get back structured records: entity number, status, entity type, filing date, location and, on request, the registered agent with address, prior names and the full filing history.

What it does

Give the actor one or more search terms. Each term runs as its own search against the Ohio business register and every matching entity comes back as one record. You can narrow results to Active, Cancelled, Dead or Fraudulent entities, and switch on a detail pass that adds the registered agent, former names and filing history to each record.

Ohio's register covers corporations, LLCs, partnerships, nonprofits, foreign entities registered in Ohio and registered trade names. Name and agent searches match from the start of the name, so a longer term gives a smaller, more specific result.

Each record includes:

• Entity number (charter number) and business name
• Status (Active, Cancelled, Dead, Permanently Cancelled, and others the register uses)
• Entity type and the filing type code of the listed filing
• Filing date and expiry date (ISO dates; expiry only where the entity type has one)
• City, county and state of the entity
• Registered agent name, plus agent address and status with the detail pass
• Prior names and filing history (code, description, date, document id) with the detail pass
• A link to the entity on the Ohio Secretary of State site

Use cases

• Company verification and KYC: confirm an Ohio entity exists, its type and whether it is in good standing
• Lead generation: build lists of newly active Ohio businesses by name pattern
• Registered agent research: list every entity an agent or registrant is attached to
• Due diligence: pull prior names and filing history for an entity number
• Data enrichment: attach Ohio entity numbers and statuses to a list of company names

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
searchMode	string	No	businessName (default), agent (registered agent or registrant) or charterNumber (entity number)
queries	array	Yes	Search terms, one search each
statuses	array	No	Only these statuses: Active, Cancelled, Dead, Fraudulent. Empty returns every status
includeDetails	boolean	No	Add registered agent, prior names and filing history to each record (slower)
maxItems	integer	Yes	Maximum records across all search terms (default 10)

Very short terms (one or two letters) match hundreds of thousands of entities and are skipped; use a longer term. The same entity found by two terms is returned once.

Output

Field	Type	Description
charterNumber	string	Ohio entity (charter) number
businessName	string	Registered business name
status	string	Entity status
businessType	string	Entity type, for example CORPORATION FOR PROFIT or REGISTERED TRADE NAME
filingType	string	Transaction code of the listed filing (ARF, RNO, ...)
filingTypeDescription	string	Plain-language name of the first filing (detail pass)
filingDate	string	Date of the listed filing, yyyy-mm-dd
expiryDate	string	Expiry date where one exists, yyyy-mm-dd, otherwise null
location	string	City of the entity's Ohio address
county	string	Ohio county
state	string	State of the entity's address
agentName	string	Registered agent or registrant (agent searches and the detail pass)
agentAddress	string	Registered agent address (detail pass)
agentStatus	string	Status of the agent appointment
priorNames	array	Former names with the date each was replaced (detail pass)
filings	array	Filing history: code, description, date, document id (detail pass)
searchMode	string	Which kind of search found the record
searchQuery	string	The search term that found the record
sourceUrl	string	Link to the entity on the Ohio Secretary of State business search site

Notes

• Public register data. The records are the Ohio Secretary of State's public business filings.
• Foreign entities and trade names have no Ohio city or county; those fields are null and state shows where the entity is based.
• Entity number lookups return the exact entity, including historical ones such as long-cancelled corporations.
• Detail pass. includeDetails makes one extra lookup per record, so large runs take longer. Leave it off when the listing fields are enough.
• Pacing. The actor spaces its lookups out, so runs with many terms or the detail pass take proportionally longer.