Output Loop Research · September 2026
10,073initial search-result records
11,722social-account observations

Who’s standing out?
Who’s falling behind?

8,976 business records. 12 locations. A closer look at the websites, social profiles and recent work a customer can actually find.

Business by business.Evidence by evidence.A picture takes shape.
01 / What the research revealed

Different professions. Different pictures.

A website, a social account and a current update tell different parts of the story. Move through four familiar professions to see the contrast.

The practical trades

The website is there. The recent work is harder to find.

18

of 42 · latest post over a year old

101 of 114 electricians had a website. But among the 42 with accepted social accounts, just 17 had posted within 90 days.

18 of those 42 had a newest recorded post more than a year old.

Consumer-facing and visual

The work gives them something worth showing.

44

of 58 · posted within 90 days

44 of 58 hairdressers with accepted social accounts had posted within 90 days—75.9%, compared with 40.5% for electricians.

A finished style can supply material for a profile, a website gallery and a follow-up post. One piece of work can support several useful updates.

A business people need to picture

Here, social activity is part of the picture.

47

of 51 · posted within 90 days

63 of 70 wedding venues had a website, and 51 had accepted social accounts. Of those 51, 47 had posted within 90 days.

A maintained channel can keep the setting, events and recent work visible while a website answers the practical questions.

Professional services

A strong website is only one part of being visible.

8.0

out of 10 · median website score

Accountancy firms had a median website score of 8.0 across 93 assessed sites. Among 64 firms with accepted social accounts, 35 had posted within 90 days.

A useful explanation or a timely answer gives a professional firm something substantive to share. Website quality and publishing activity are separate choices.

A profession in focus01 / 04
Retained business evidence · September 2026
The finding to take away

18 of 42

The newest recorded post was more than a year old.

For nearly half the electricians with an accepted social account, even their latest recorded update was over a year old. Keeping one existing channel useful is a concrete place to start. Read the electrician edition.

Activity & audience

Current posts.
Larger audiences.

On Instagram, accounts with a post in the last 30 days had a median 1,089.5 followers. For accounts whose latest post was over a year old, the median was 207.

Choose a platform to see its own audience scale.

Explore Social media — six social-channel chapters.

Median followers / subscribers · grouped by newest post

Your profession. Your comparison.

Is your profession
ahead of the picture?

Start with all 8,976 businesses, then compare a profession or a location against the same study baseline.

Electricians · website available88.6%
All professions · all locations83.1%

Find your benchmark.

How the research became one connected record.

From prospect searches to website evidence and social qualification.

Follow the process →
The combined research

617,704
populated business-table cells.

172 fields across 8,976 business records. The value lies in connecting them: what a firm offers, where it can be found, and how current its presence looks.

Choose where to go next

Find the part that matters to you.

Research method, definitions and sources
The depth behind the numbers

The first list became a much richer business record.

In the original round, the same 4,703 businesses went from a 17-field prospect list to a 60-field qualification record. The completed research now connects business assessments with detailed social-account records.

Original round · Discovery

17 fields per business

4,703 rows × 17 fields
79,951 cell positions

Business names, locations, website and social links, telephone numbers, addresses and the sources behind each record.

Same round · Qualification

60 fields per business

4,703 rows × 60 fields
282,180 cell positions

Website assessments, review volumes, contact evidence, social candidates and the reasoning behind qualification scores. The record expanded by 43 fields.

Completed research · Social detail

53 fields per account observation

272,063 populated cells
Across 11,793 rows in the current account export

Platform, account ownership, audience, latest posts and profile completeness: information that shows what sits behind a social link.

172fields in the combined business table
8,976business rows brought together
617,704populated cells in that business table

The result is a business picture that can be compared from several directions: the website, the contact details, the social profiles and how recently those profiles were used.

How these totals are counted

The first two figures describe the same original-round population. Rows multiplied by fields gives spreadsheet capacity, including blanks; it is not a count of collected facts. The final business and account totals count non-empty cells, including recorded scores, classifications and source information. They are separate views with overlapping information and are not added together as unique facts. A field can also contain several links or pieces of text.

The current account export contains 11,793 rows; the earlier population bridge used elsewhere in this prototype records 11,722 observations. These describe different retained versions. Account rows can include repeated or unreadable observations and are not a count of unique accepted profiles.

Sources: original prospection closeout of 14 August 2026 (4,703 × 17); qualification master and field-lineage audit of 19 August 2026 (4,703 × 60); current combined business and account CSV exports checked for this update.

Automation gathers the material. People decide what it means.

The workflow connects repeated retrieval and extraction tasks with structured records. That makes it possible to compare the same kinds of evidence across thousands of businesses. Human work remains in setting the questions, checking matches, judging comparisons and explaining a practical response.

A strong website score is not the same thing as recent social activity. A review count is not a measure of enquiry handling. Keeping those distinctions clear helps turn the research into specific advice rather than a single verdict on a business.

The units matter because the stages do different work.

The initial 10,073 search-result occurrences include repeated appearances. Earlier consolidation retained 9,590 acquisition rows; the current combined research contains 8,976 business IDs. These are separate recorded populations. The numerical difference is not presented as a measured conversion rate or a complete count of exclusions.

Social-account observations also include unreadable or differently attributed material. They are not 11,722 unique business accounts. The explorer uses accepted accounts assigned to the business and readable through the study.

A selected geography, with room for useful comparisons.

The programme covers twelve selected places: . Hemel Hempstead and Bovingdon remain separate. Harrow is a London borough in historic Middlesex.

A future study could apply the same questions to a larger city. This edition describes the locations actually studied.

Evidence and scope

Source: retained September 2026 combined business research and its population bridge. Website model: website-1.0.0. Social recency comparisons end 8 September 2026. The private explorer contains aggregate records only. No new collection was used to build this prototype.

Measured full-run timing and cost claims are not included here because the complete comparable-run reconciliation is not yet part of this prototype. No four-hour or 10× delivery claim is implied by the record totals.

From the picture to the detail

Choose where to look next.

The overview shows how businesses appear online. Explore the six social channels in detail, or see how a clearer website can help the next customer take action.

Explore the social media chapters ↗

Explore use cases ↗

Sources & method

Retained business research · snapshot 8 September 2026. No new business collection was performed for this presentation.

  • Presence uses all 8,976 business records. A platform counts when an owned, readable account is retained. Businesses can use multiple platforms and belong to multiple professions. Profession comparisons shown here have at least 40 businesses.
  • Audience comparisons count distinct normalised account addresses with matched audience and post dates. Conflicting values are excluded. Each displayed activity group contains at least 40 accounts. LinkedIn compares within 30 days with 91–365 days because the over-year group has only one account.
  • Posting recency means time since the newest recorded post. It is not posting frequency. Audience is the retained follower or subscriber count, not enquiries, sales or measured growth. The owner actions are practical suggestions, not outcomes measured by this study.
  • Profession highlights are descriptive comparisons selected from the retained data. Sources: combined-estate-v1.1/combined.sqlite, business_view; audience-account-level-analysis.json. The original case-study site remains available through the links above.
Read the chart data and definitions

Study locations

LocationBusinesses
Aylesbury729
Berkhamsted713
Borehamwood760
Bovingdon195
Harrow876
Hemel Hempstead815
High Wycombe831
Hitchin832
Potters Bar855
St Albans790
Watford779
Welwyn Garden City801

Platform presence and recorded activity

Business counts, once per platform. Recent = latest recorded post within 90 days of 8 September 2026. Categories and platforms overlap.

PlatformAcceptedRecentOlderUndated
Facebook2336137394122
Instagram2059132571222
LinkedIn1230667194369
X109217886450
YouTube49115930230
TikTok29614713019

Selected categories

Trades1538
Automotive903
Clinics and healthcare1201
Personal care and beauty975
Hospitality and events483
Business and professional services1145

Instagram audience

Within 30 days: median 1,089.5 followers, 896 distinct accounts. Over a year: median 207, 329 accounts. Matched audience/date sample. Association does not establish causation.

Sector edition · Electricians

· Compare your profession

Electricians have the websites. Recent work is harder to find.

Most electrical businesses in this study already had a website. The sharper difference appeared after that: electricians with a social account were less likely than Trades peers to have shown recent work.

The practical task is to connect recent examples of the work with clear service information and an easy enquiry.

This edition examines 114 electrician businesses drawn from the 12-location study. Of those, 101 had an available website and 42 had an accepted, readable social account. The evidence points to one manageable improvement: make the website and one active social channel work as a pair.

88.6%have a website · 101 of 114
18 of 42newest recorded post over a year old
172median Instagram followers · 28 accounts

Many businesses already have the website and account. Keeping recent work visible is the next useful job.

Websites are level. Recent posting is 17.5 points behind.

0%25%50%75%100%Has a websiteAll 114 businesses87.9%88.6%Posted in 90 days42 with social accounts57.9%40.5%ElectriciansTrades benchmark

Electricians match their peers on websites, but fewer show recent activity

Electricians matched the wider Trades category on website availability. The gap was only 0.7 percentage points: 88.6% for electricians and 87.9% across Trades.

The difference widened when the comparison moved from presence to recency. Among businesses with an accepted social account, 23.8% of electricians had posted within 30 days, compared with 43.6% across Trades. Over 90 days, the comparison was 40.5% against 57.9%.

That 17.5-point quarterly gap has a plain implication. An electrical business can have the same online building blocks as its peers while giving a prospective customer less current evidence to assess.

Recent work matters because electrical services are easier to understand when they are concrete. A photograph of a finished consumer-unit change, EV charger, lighting installation or commercial fit-out can show the type of work offered. A short explanation can answer what was changed and who the service is for. The relevant website page can then provide the fuller detail and enquiry route.

Where electricians sit among 15 trades

Trades 57.9%Electricians: 40.5% (17/42)Electricians: 40.5%Plumbers: 49.1% (26/53)Plumbers: 49.1%Builders: 64.8% (35/54)Builders: 64.8%Roofers: 69.2% (18/26)Roofers: 69.2%Heating engineers: 51.5% (34/66)Heating engineers: 51.5%Boiler installers: 50.8% (30/59)Boiler installers: 50.8%Landscapers: 61.9% (39/63)Landscapers: 61.9%Handyman services: 59.6% (28/47)Handyman services: 59.6%Air-conditioning companies: 63.0% (34/54)Air-conditioning: 63.0%Locksmiths: 63.9% (23/36)Locksmiths: 63.9%Drainage companies: 53.6% (15/28)Drainage: 53.6%Cleaning companies: 62.7% (32/51)Cleaning: 62.7%Commercial cleaners: 56.2% (27/48)Commercial cleaners: 56.2%Removal companies: 57.7% (30/52)Removal: 57.7%Pest-control companies: 59.1% (13/22)Pest-control: 59.1%35%50%65%80%Electricians 40.5%

Only one of 42 social-account businesses lacked an owned website in the main record

One exception among 42 businesses

One mark = one business with an accepted social accountOrange: 1 without an owned website in its main record

The website and social evidence overlap almost completely. Forty-one electrician records had both an available website and an accepted social account. Only one had an accepted social account without an owned website in the main record.

For most electricians with a social account, the website is already there. Connecting the two lets a customer move from a project photograph to the details they need before making an enquiry.

The connection should be visible in both directions. A post should point to the service it demonstrates. The service page should make the next action obvious. The website should also show a small selection of current work, so useful evidence does not disappear down a social feed.

For the 60 records with a website but no accepted social account, the decision is different. One channel can be used as a public work log, but only if someone can maintain it. An empty new account adds another surface to check without giving a customer anything useful.

More than half had a website without a social account

114businesses60 website only · 52.6%41 website + social · 36.0%12 neither available · 10.5%1 social, no owned site · 0.9%

For 18 electricians, the latest recorded post was over a year old

18 of 42 had no recorded post within the past year

One mark = one business with an accepted social accountOrange: 18 over a year · Grey: 23 within a year + 1 undated

Of the 42 electricians with accepted social accounts, 23 had a recorded post within the previous year. Eighteen had a dated latest post more than a year old. One had no usable latest-post date.

Those businesses have an immediate starting point: bring the profile up to date and show one recent job. An owner posting occasionally faces a smaller task—keeping that useful material coming.

For the seven businesses whose newest post was 31 to 90 days old, the job is continuity. Capture the next suitable project and keep a workable rhythm. For the 18 with a year-long gap, the first job is a reset: update the profile, confirm the services and contact route, then publish one strong current example.

Reopening every old account at once is unnecessary. Instagram had the largest electrician presence in the study, with 28 accounts. Facebook had 22. The sensible choice is the channel that already has a relevant audience and can be kept current with the least extra handling.

Half the Facebook accounts last posted more than a year ago

The typical audiences are 172 on Instagram and 142 on Facebook

A local audience, at a scale an owner can recognise

172Instagram28 accounts142Facebook22 accounts74LinkedIn7 accounts58.5X8 accounts3TikTok5 accounts0YouTube3 accounts

The typical measured audience was 172 followers on Instagram and 142 on Facebook. Those figures make the peer context more realistic. A local electrical business does not need thousands of followers before its account can help a customer understand the work.

The practical opportunity is to give the existing audience something useful. Explain a job clearly enough that a reader recognises a service they need, then make the next step easy.

Account counts are out of 114 businesses and can overlap across platforms. Instagram reached 24.6% of the sample; Facebook 19.3%; X 7.0%; LinkedIn 6.1%; TikTok 4.4%; YouTube 2.6%. Audience figures are followers, or YouTube subscribers. Facebook uses 21 audience values; other platforms use the account counts shown. The last four platforms have small samples.

A useful project post needs only four parts:

  1. Name the job in customer language. “EV charger installation” is clearer than a generic “another job completed.”
  2. Explain the starting problem. One sentence gives the photograph meaning: what needed replacing, adding or making safe.
  3. Show the completed result. Use a clear image with permission and remove personal details, addresses and anything unsafe to disclose.
  4. Point to the next useful page. Use the matching service page or a simple contact route. Make the profile’s website link useful too, and tell readers where to find it.

This format helps a prospective customer recognise their own requirement. It also gives the business reusable material: the same job note can support a social post, a website project example and an answer to a common enquiry.

A higher overall score can still conceal the weaker website

Two anonymised electrical contractors show why a single total should not decide the work.

Contractor A had the higher overall Digital Presence Score: 66.7 out of 100, compared with Contractor B’s 58.3. Yet Contractor A’s website quality was much weaker, scoring 5.5 out of 10 against 9 out of 10.

The breakdown explains the reversal. Contractor A had stronger social and business-information components, but its website assessment recorded thin content and no enquiry form. Contractor B had the stronger website, while its social component contributed less to the total.

The stronger website does not receive the higher overall score

For Contractor A, the practical change is to give existing activity a better destination: fuller service explanations, selected project examples and a straightforward enquiry form. For Contractor B, a website rebuild would miss the point. The more relevant task is to show current work and connect it to the already-strong site.

The component scores prevent the same generic advice being given to both businesses. One needs stronger service pages and an enquiry form; the other already has a strong website to support its updates.

The best first move depends on what a customer finds today

Find your first move

Do you have a website?

YES · What does your social account show?

No account: choose one channel you can maintain. Start with three jobs that show your range.

Old posts: refresh the services and contact details. Show one current job and link to its service page.

Current posts: give the services you show a clear explanation, project evidence and an easy enquiry route on your website.

NO · Is there a social account?

Yes: keep that audience connected while you add an owned page explaining services and contact details.

No: build that service and contact page first. Then add one channel you can maintain.

For every route: capture one completed job
Service · problem · result · permitted photograph · service area

Give one person responsibility for approval and posting. Capturing the five details above becomes part of finishing the job.

Three stages turn a business list into a useful comparison

01 · Prospection114electrician business records

The retained electrician sample drawn from the 12-location study.

02 · Qualification101 / 84websites / recorded scores

Website availability and assessed features, including service content and enquiry routes.

03 · Social qualification73accepted accounts · 42 businesses

Platform, audience and latest-post evidence attached to the business record.

These are businesses, websites, scores and accounts—not field counts. A business can have several accounts. Totals describe this electrician sample, not the full project.

End notes

  1. This edition describes 114 businesses identified as electricians drawn from the 12-location study in retained September 2026 research. It is a baseline comparison, not a time trend.
  2. “Available” means found and retained through this study. Accepted social accounts were classified as the business’s own and readable; this does not establish whether a platform classified an account as personal or business.
  3. Posting shares use businesses with at least one accepted social account as the base. A business counts once when any accepted account has a post inside the window. Platform rows overlap because one business can use several platforms.
  4. The 30- and 90-day windows ended 8 September 2026. A latest post more than a year old describes returned dated material; it does not prove abandonment, posting frequency or a commercial effect.
  5. The Trades benchmark contains 1,538 unique businesses, including electricians. Segment memberships can overlap. The 15 displayed segments are the retained sizeable peer comparison, not every label attached to a Trades record.
  6. Website quality /10 is a separate assessment from the 36-point qualification breakdown. Digital Presence Score /100 is the qualification total divided by 36 and multiplied by 100.
  7. The research measures presence, returned account activity and assessed website features. These sample comparisons have not undergone independent replication; they are descriptive findings, not measured effects on enquiries, revenue or search performance.
  8. Website/social overlap uses the main record’s business-website classification. The single social-without-owned-website record contains directory evidence and is not presented as proof of a deliberate social-only business model.
  9. Source: the retained combined business research, website assessments and social collection through 8 September 2026. These are anonymised real examples. Identifying records and calculation notes remain private. The website /10 assessment covers HTTPS, mobile support, structured data, enquiry forms, analytics, image formats and content depth.

Use cases · useful features for real businesses

Give the next customer
somewhere useful to land.

A first website has a straightforward job: explain the work, establish confidence and make the next step easy.

7,460business websites in the main records
1,516records without one
43of those had a website field on an accepted social profile
1,473without a website in either check

Help the next customer take the next step.

A useful website makes the business easy to understand, easy to trust and easy to contact. These features can support a sole trader, a local service business or a larger team.

Display a clear email address and a tap-to-call telephone number, alongside opening hours and the areas you serve. Keep them easy to find on every page, especially on a phone.

Supporting evidence85%

rated contact details and opening hours important when researching local businesses.

BrightLocal · 2025 · 1,000 US adults

Consumer survey, not a measured increase in enquiries. It supports making information easy to find across your website and listings.

Read the research ↗

Show genuine Google ratings and selected customer reviews with a link to their source. Keep the rating and review count current, and make it easy for customers to read the wider feedback.

Supporting evidence97%

of respondents said they read online reviews for local businesses.

BrightLocal · 2026 · 1,002 US adults

Self-reported review use across platforms. It does not mean a Google review widget alone will increase sales. Keep reviews genuine and link to the original source.

Read the research ↗
Research sources and missed-call cost estimates

External research supports these use cases; it is separate from the 8,976-business study. Survey responses, observed behaviour and financial models answer different questions. None is a guarantee of results from adding a feature.

Consumer Search Behavior — BrightLocal · 2025 · 1,000 US adults

Salon and spa booking trends — Zenoti · 2025 consumer survey

Generative AI at Work — Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond · QJE · 2025

Call Conversion Industry Benchmarks — Invoca · 2025 · over 60 million calls

Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 — BrightLocal · 2026 · 1,002 US adults

What makes consumers choose your business? — BrightLocal · July 2026 · 1,227 US local searchers

The value of BBB Accreditation — IABBB · 2024 · 13,000 business responses

Professional Services Client Journey Report 2025 — insight6 · 2025 · 430 enquiries, 219 firms

What might missed enquiries cost? insight6 models £1.34 million annually for a legal firm handling 100 enquiries per month, using a 30% assumed conversion reduction and £4,000 average client value. This covers poor enquiry handling, not missed calls alone; it is not an audited average loss. It should not be used as a forecast for a local business.

Read the model and assumptions ↗

For your own business, estimate additional revenue as: genuinely lost enquiries × recoverable share × booking conversion × average booking value. Deduplicate repeat calls, exclude spam and existing-customer queries, and deduct delivery and service costs before discussing profit.

Keep the first version easy to maintain.

A useful website does not need every possible feature on day one. Start with accurate services, evidence and a working enquiry route. Add an assistant when there is a clear set of questions it can answer well. Connect social content when there is a reliable way to capture and approve it.

That gives each addition a job. The website explains, the project examples demonstrate, and the enquiry route helps the customer take the next step.

Sources and definitions

Retained combined research, September 2026: 8,976 business IDs. Website availability uses the main record’s Business website classification. The additional profile check uses non-empty Website fields on accepted Own/Readable accounts. Those 43 fields are not independently verified as owned websites; they are excluded conservatively from this feature’s no-website cohort. “Unavailable” describes this study’s checks, not an owner’s decision or motivation. The features described are proposed services, not measured sales outcomes from this study.

Find your comparison

What does your profession look like?

Start with the whole study. Choose a profession or location to see how it compares with the same overall benchmark.

Your selection. Three views.
Matches this view Other businesses114 electricians

One square = one of the 114 electricians. Each business keeps its place as the view changes.

The whole study, in view

12 locations.
professions.
One connected picture.

Explore the places behind the research, or look through the professions represented in the retained records.

The baseline includes all 8,976 businesses. Drill down into 18 selected professions or any study location. All-location comparisons use at least 40 relevant records; local comparisons use at least 10.

Use the comparison to choose a first move.

These figures describe the trade you selected. They do not assess your own business. Start with what a customer can find today, then compare like with like.

How to read the figures

Website and social availability use all businesses in the chosen cohort. Recent posting uses businesses with an accepted social account; the 90-day window ends 8 September 2026. Website scores and review medians use their available numeric records. The dark marker shows the wider category for an all-location selection, or the same trade across all locations for a local selection. Small relevant bases are withheld individually. A missing comparison is never displayed as zero.

Automations · connected capabilities

AI automation tools. What did each contribute?

How Make, Apify, Firecrawl and Exa helped turn prospect searches into business research. Explore the AI automation workflows for finding businesses, assessing websites and analysing social profiles—with the outputs, costs and practical lessons from each tool.

Follow the workflows →
Specialist tools. Evidence brought together.
Find prospects→Capture & qualify websites→Collect profiles & posts→Compare businesses
Apify9,806items across five principal tasks

Company profiles and posts for Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok.

Explore Apify ↗
16,345recorded operations

Instagram profile and post material connected to business records.

Explore Make ↗
Firecrawl559 / 607difficult-site domains captured

A 92.1% capture result in the named August qualification batch.

Explore Firecrawl ↗
Exa687missing-site searches

236.2 seconds and $4.809 in the named discovery batch.

Explore Exa ↗
1,478returned result records

1,386 records with resolved accounts; 1,298 with a latest-post date. 3,049 requests across 1,622 submitted candidates.

Explore X ↗
YouTube766returned result records

616 records with resolved channels; 582 with a latest-video date. 820 submissions used 1,956 quota units.

Explore YouTube ↗
Website evidence6,131distinct website captures

Distinct HTML content hashes recorded across the combined evidence register, covering 6,562 business records. Includes multiple capture routes; the August direct-retrieval campaign is detailed below.

Explore website evidence ↗

Inside the collection.

Open a tool to see its workflow, returned fields, recorded results and costs.

Apify

Apify supplied the detail behind the social profiles—not just a list of accounts

Five principal collection tasks returned 9,806 items in the retained September receipts. They supplied company descriptions, website links, audiences, opening hours, service areas, employee information and post-level activity. The practical value was joining those details to the website assessment for the same business.

Apify’s reported programme cost was $55.07. The retained September consumption ledger covers $31.48 of Apify work; the five principal tasks below account for $30.57 within that ledger. These are different scopes, not competing totals.

Facebook took most of the principal-task spend

Collection task Actor used Submitted Returned items Recorded cost
Facebook page details apify/facebook-pages-scraper 3,579 3,277 $15.09
Facebook posts apify/facebook-posts-scraper 3,610 3,580 $12.59
LinkedIn company details harvestapi/linkedin-company 1,593 1,495 $0.87
LinkedIn company posts harvestapi/linkedin-company-posts 1,593 1,055 $1.37
TikTok profiles clockworks/tiktok-profile-scraper 400 399 $0.65

Facebook’s two tasks account for $27.68—about 91% of the spend in this five-task comparison. That makes their output quality the first place to look when judging value from this part of the project. The profile and post tasks also answer different questions: who the business is and how it describes itself, versus what it has been publishing.

Facebook details: contact routes, service information and audience

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Page identity 2,849/3,277 Links details to the correct page
Page name 2,849/3,277 Matches the business identity
Categories 2,800/3,277 Describes the work offered
Intro 2,708/3,277 Short explanation of the business
Website 2,730/3,277 A route from social profile to website
Email 2,486/3,277 A published contact route
Telephone 2,456/3,277 A published contact route
Followers 2,803/3,277 Audience benchmark
Page likes 2,803/3,277 Separate from follower count
Following 2,787/3,277 Profile context
Opening hours 1,903/3,277 When customers can use the service
Address 2,208/3,277 Location evidence
Service area 797/3,277 Geographic scope
Profile image 2,803/3,277 Profile presentation
Cover image 2,780/3,277 Profile presentation
Page creation date 2,800/3,277 Age of the account, not the business
Other social links 664/3,277 Connects the wider profile
WhatsApp number 322/3,277 Alternative enquiry route
Services 197/3,277 More specific service wording

Facebook supplied website values in 2,730 records, email values in 2,486 and opening-hours values in 1,903. This is substantially more useful to business research than a recommendation percentage that barely varies. These fields describe whether the profile offers a next step and explains when and where the business operates.

The retained output also includes recommendation and rating fields, page-advertising state, price-range information and further linked-platform fields. They remain available in the field catalogue; rating ceilings are not promoted into business-performance headlines. Account details are assessed after matching them to the business.

Facebook posts: what was being published and the response it received

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Post identity 3,145/3,580 Connects observations of the same post
Post date 3,145/3,580 Posting recency
Post text 2,681/3,580 Services, offers and projects described
Likes 3,145/3,580 Response to the collected post
Shares 3,145/3,580 Resharing of the collected post
Comments 557/3,580 Reported discussion count
Media 2,882/3,580 Photographs or other attached material
Outbound link 1,025/3,580 Destination offered to readers
Video views 535/3,580 Audience for video material where returned
Shared-post origin 132/3,580 Distinguishes original and reshared material

Post text was available in 2,681 records and media in 2,882. Together with the post date, this material gives the analyst the substance behind an activity figure: project photographs, service descriptions, offers and other business updates. The shared-post reference also allows a reshare to be distinguished from material the business published itself.

For a contractor, the valuable comparison is whether current work is visible and whether a post leads to useful information or an enquiry. Likes and views add context to individual posts. They are not a substitute for that assessment, and a latest-post sample does not measure the performance of an entire campaign.

LinkedIn details: business context that a follower count cannot supply

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Company identity 1,495/1,495 Matches the company page
Company name 1,495/1,495 Identity evidence
Tagline 1,240/1,495 Short positioning statement
Website 1,480/1,495 Company website reference
Phone 944/1,495 Contact route
Description 1,478/1,495 Services and specialism
Specialities 1,097/1,495 More precise activity labels
Industry 1,495/1,495 Category context
Locations 1,495/1,495 Geographic context
Employees 1,495/1,495 Company-size context
Employee-range lower bound 1,451/1,495 Reported size band
Employee-range upper bound 1,432/1,495 Reported size band
Followers 1,495/1,495 Audience size
Founded year 1,192/1,495 Reported company age
Company type 1,438/1,495 Organisation context
Logo 1,434/1,495 Profile completeness
Cover image 1,321/1,495 Profile presentation
Page type 1,495/1,495 Account classification
Verified-page flag 1,495/1,495 Platform-reported state
Call-to-action URL 1,478/1,495 Destination offered by the page

LinkedIn returned a website in 1,480 of 1,495 company-detail records and a description in 1,478. Founded year was available in 1,192 returned records. These are useful inputs to company-age and service comparisons once the company identity is accepted; they are not a reason to assume every record in the business master has a reliable founding date.

Employee count and company-type fields add a different perspective from consumer-facing platforms. A business with a small social audience may still present a substantial organisation through its company description, specialities and workforce information. That is why the study retains the detail rather than reducing LinkedIn to “account found”.

LinkedIn posts: company information and publishing activity are separate outputs

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Post date 1,055/1,055 Recency
Content 1,045/1,055 Message and service wording
Author type 1,055/1,055 Company/person context
Likes 1,055/1,055 Response to the post
Comments 1,055/1,055 Discussion
Shares 1,055/1,055 Redistribution
Images 1,055/1,055 Visual material
Article title 92/1,055 Linked editorial content
Video URL 113/1,055 Video format
Document title 34/1,055 Downloadable or document content
Reposted-content identity 53/1,055 Identifies a reshare

The post collection includes text in 1,045 records, video links in 113 and document titles in 34. Those formats help explain how businesses demonstrate expertise: short updates, longer articles, video and documents are different forms of presentation. An analyst can connect the material to the company’s stated specialities and website services, rather than guessing its marketing strategy from follower count.

TikTok: audience, video activity and the route beyond the platform

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Profile identity 367/399 Account matching
Biography 344/399 Service description
Bio link 93/399 Destination outside TikTok
Followers 367/399 Audience size
Following 367/399 Profile context
Profile likes 367/399 Accumulated platform response
Video count 367/399 Content volume
Verified flag 367/399 Platform state
Private-account flag 367/399 Access context
Latest video date 344/399 Recency
Video text 335/399 What the video describes
Video URL 344/399 Source reference
Video duration 344/399 Content format
Views 344/399 Video audience
Likes 344/399 Video response
Comments 344/399 Discussion
Shares 344/399 Redistribution
Saves 344/399 Recorded saves
Hashtags 344/399 Content labels
Pinned flag 344/399 Distinguishes pinned material
Sponsored flag 344/399 Platform-reported promotion context

The TikTok task returned 367 profile identities and 344 dated video records, while a bio link was populated in 93 records. That distinction matters to a business using video to attract attention: the profile and its content are one part of the journey; a destination for the interested viewer is another. At business level, the retained bio link can be checked against the website and enquiry routes already collected.

What we derived after collection

The research added eight completeness checks where the relevant field exists: phone, website, about text, logo, biography, email, reported hours and categories. It also classified ownership, retained collection outcomes and calculated posting recency. These checks make the raw fields comparable without pretending every platform has the same schema.

A business-facing table therefore shows the available accounts, the measured audience and dated activity, with a short platform note. The electricians edition demonstrates that approach. The practitioner’s output is the field catalogue and the collection results; the owner’s output is the comparison and a practical recommendation.

Download the aggregate field catalogue. It lists populated field counts, not business identities or profile values.

How collection outcomes were handled

Task Returned records Records carrying profile/post identity Explicit error records
Facebook details 3,277 2,849 428
Facebook posts 3,580 3,145 435
LinkedIn details 1,495 1,495 0
LinkedIn posts 1,055 1,055 0
TikTok profiles 399 367 32

Collection errors were retained as explicit outcomes alongside the usable profile and post records. They formed part of the operational account of the work: submissions, material returned, errors encountered and the evidence available for qualification. They were not treated as business attributes or used to erase the useful fields collected elsewhere.

For a practitioner, this makes the process reviewable. Facebook details delivered 2,849 page identities and Facebook posts delivered 3,145 post identities. LinkedIn supplied company detail and publishing evidence through separate tasks. Those outputs then supported the business-level ownership checks, audience comparisons, service analysis and posting timelines.

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Make

Make connected Instagram profiles to their posts

The retained social receipts record 16,345 Make operations against 2,991 submitted candidates. The Instagram export contains 2,434 profile records, 7,205 post records and 414 error records.

Make’s job in this project was the Instagram collection workflow. It brought profile and post material into the research so that audience, biography, website and current activity could be joined to the same business. A single Instagram account could produce several post records; an operation was a workflow step, not a business or a post.

What the workflow returned

Retained output Records How it was used
Profile records 2,434 Audience, profile volume and identity
Post records 7,205 Dates, captions and response
Error records 414 Separate unsuccessful collection outcomes
Total Instagram export 10,053 Joined profile/post/error record set

The raw export mixes these record types. A row with a post caption is not another company profile. Keeping them separate allows a practitioner to compare the cost of collection with both the account detail and the material it delivered.

Fields available for the research

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Username 10,053/10,053 Connects profile and post output
Profile name 2,812/10,053 Identity matching
Followers 2,434/10,053 Audience
Posts published 2,434/10,053 Profile content volume
Following 2,434/10,053 Profile context
Website 2,657/10,053 Destination
Biography 2,762/10,053 Services and positioning
Post type 7,205/10,053 Content format
Post date 7,184/10,053 Recency
Caption 6,900/10,053 Project and service wording
Post URL 7,184/10,053 Source reference
Post likes 6,848/10,053 Recorded response
Post comments 7,184/10,053 Recorded discussion

The denominator here is the combined 10,053-row Instagram export. Profile fields and post fields belong to different record types; a field absent from a post row is not a missing field on the company profile.

The export has dated post values in 7,184 rows and captions in 6,900. Those fields provide the material behind a current-work comparison. Follower count describes the audience already accumulated; captions and dates show the work being presented to it.

In the electrician study, Instagram was available for 28 businesses, but only five had a post within 30 days. The automation’s commercial output is that distinction and the underlying project material. It allows a conversation about keeping an existing profile useful, rather than merely recommending Instagram because it is popular.

How the pieces fit together

The retained workflow submitted account candidates, collected profile and post outputs, saved them with the business reference and then normalised the fields for the social assessment. Ownership and collection outcome were handled before business-level comparisons. This let profile information, latest activity and website evidence appear together in the same business report.

For a practitioner, the reusable pattern is to preserve that join through the automation: business reference → account → profile fields → dated posts → report measures. Make’s operation count measures workflow consumption. The profile and post counts describe the evidence delivered. The report’s business counts describe the final analytical population.

The reported programme cost for Make was $18.82. That cost and the 16,345-operation receipt total have different accounting scopes, so this edition does not manufacture a cost per successful business from their division.

Aggregate field catalogue · Electrician audience and activity comparison

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Firecrawl

Firecrawl captured pages from 559 of 607 difficult-site domains

A verified qualification round retained pages from 92.1% of its Firecrawl queue and added verified website evidence for 395 businesses. That is a concrete contribution to the research: businesses that would otherwise have had less website evidence could proceed with a better-supported profile.

This edition describes the 14–19 August qualification round, whose parent population was 4,703 prospects. In that executed round, ordinary retrieval and candidate verification preceded a difficult-site Firecrawl batch. The wider project contract also specified Firecrawl Batch Scrape for resolved business-owned URLs; the executed round and the broader design should not be confused.

What the difficult-site batch produced

Outcome Count Share of 607 submitted domains
Page captured 559 92.1%
Unresolved retrieval 48 7.9%
Verified website evidence added 395 businesses Kept as a business outcome
Captured pages retained without promotion 164 domains Kept as a domain outcome

All 559 HTML/metadata pairs were retained and hash-reconciled. Capturing a page and accepting it for a particular business were separate steps: the first is a retrieval result; the second makes the material useful to the business profile.

What was saved, and what was extracted from it

Evidence or field group Role in the process
Raw HTML and paired metadata Saved page evidence for repeatable extraction
Requested and final URL Records the destination and redirects
Retrieval state, time and provider Identifies the collection outcome
Page hash Detects identical content and links the assessment to its source
Visible service wording and page content Explains the business and supports content-depth assessment
Structured data and page metadata Supplies machine-readable business information
Website links Supplies social-account and relevant internal-page candidates
Public email and telephone links Supplies contact evidence where present
Forms and technical page features Supports the website assessment after extraction

The first four groups describe retrieval evidence. The later groups describe material extracted from the captured pages; they are not all direct Firecrawl response fields. The project’s retrieval contract requested contact-bearing content, including headers and footers, so useful business information was not discarded with a main-text-only view.

It recovered more than obvious access blocks

Firecrawl recovered 24 of 37 cases previously labelled as TLS failures and 11 of 14 labelled as other transport failures. Those results show why a failed ordinary request was not sufficient reason to abandon the business’s website evidence.

The round also exposed a cost problem: a gateway timeout could leave a provider job running. Retrying without reconciling that job risked another charge. Payloads reported 559 credits; the balance showed 619 spent at the last observation, with an estimated 660–700 after outstanding jobs. Small batches of 10–15 URLs were the reliable operating size observed under that round’s 90-second gateway timeout.

The practical lesson is to save the provider job reference before polling, reconcile a timeout against that job, then decide whether a retry is needed. That protects the spend and preserves pages already collected.

How retained pages paid for more than one analysis

The round stored 3,510 HTML occurrences across direct retrieval, candidate verification and Firecrawl, representing 3,478 distinct pages after content deduplication. Those saved pages supported website features, service wording, contact extraction and social-link discovery. The same source could be analysed again without paying to collect it again.

The wider programme recorded 6,720 Firecrawl credits, with a reported cost of roughly £30/$40. Those programme figures are separate from this named batch, and credits are not requests.

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Exa

Exa searched 687 missing-site records in under four minutes

In the verified August qualification round, Exa processed all 687 remaining discovery records in 236.2 seconds at a recorded cost of $4.809. It returned a high-confidence or plausible website candidate for 598—87.0%.

The job was specific: find candidate websites for prospects whose initial record lacked a captured website. Google outbound-link resolution ran first. Parallel’s free route completed 40 searches before its fair-usage throttle interrupted that approach; Exa handled the remaining 687 records.

What the search produced

Candidate outcome Records Share of 687
High-confidence candidate 479 69.7%
Plausible candidate 119 17.3%
Directory or other result 75 10.9%
No owned candidate 14 2.0%

The useful output was a candidate destination linked to the business being researched, followed by a decision about relevance. A directory result could help identify the business without becoming its official website. A likely domain then went through page capture and identity verification.

Search and qualification did different work

Step Output used by the next step
Missing-site input Business identity and available location evidence
Exa search Candidate website destinations
Candidate assessment High-confidence, plausible, directory/other or no-owned-candidate classification
Page capture Retained content from the candidate destination
Identity verification Accepted owned-site evidence linked to the prospect
Qualification Website assessment and useful extracted business information

Across the missing-site discovery and verification stage, 258 of the original 1,320 prospects without a captured website gained verified owned-site evidence. That is a result of the joined stage, not 258 sites that can all be attributed to Exa alone.

The distinction is useful to anyone building prospecting automation. Search expands the options quickly; retained page evidence turns an option into something a business report can use. Making these outputs explicit allows search performance and website qualification to be assessed separately.

The named Exa batch averaged about $0.007 per processed record. The wider programme’s reported Exa cost was $22.12. These figures describe different scopes; neither is a current price quote.

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Website evidence and direct retrieval

6,131 distinct website captures

The combined evidence register records 6,131 distinct HTML content hashes matched to 6,562 business records. Shared captures can support more than one business record. This is the combined collection across capture routes, not a direct-retrieval-only total or a fresh physical-file count.

August direct-retrieval campaign: 2,383 domains

The documented August campaign attempted 2,893 canonical domains and retained HTML from 2,383—82.4%. It spent zero provider credits. The saved content supported website assessment, contact extraction and discovery of social-account links.

Campaign result Recorded quantity
Canonical domains attempted 2,893
Domains with HTML retained 2,383
Domains in the remaining retrieval queue 510
Businesses scored in the campaign 2,425
Raw social links found 5,423
Canonical account candidates after link reconciliation 4,008
Businesses with those social candidates 1,625

The number of businesses scored differs from the number of domains: business records and domains are different units. Similarly, 5,423 links became 4,008 candidate accounts because repeated links and URL variants needed reconciliation.

One saved page supplied several kinds of evidence

The extraction examined visible text, links, structured JSON-LD, metadata, contact links and forms. It supplied service wording, website contact routes, social-account candidates and technical features used by the assessment. Retaining the original page meant those outputs could be checked and recalculated without another collection request.

For an automation builder, the important design choice is to save the source once and extract several useful outputs from it. The page becomes more valuable than a single score: it can explain what the business does, where the customer can go next and which social accounts should be collected in the next phase.

The campaign’s remaining retrieval queue showed the limit of ordinary fetching. The Firecrawl edition explains the later difficult-site work and its verified results. Zero provider credits describes this retrieval lane’s metering, not zero labour or infrastructure cost.

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

X

X supplied account history as well as the latest post

The retained receipts record 3,049 X requests against 1,622 submitted candidates. The export contains 1,478 result records, with a resolved user identity in 1,386 and a latest-post date in 1,298.

X used its API route rather than the Apify tasks. The output combined profile information and public metrics with the latest recorded post. It also kept reply, repost and quote flags, which help distinguish original business material from other activity.

What the records contain

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Resolved user identity 1,386/1,478 Account identity
Display name 1,386/1,478 Business matching
Description 1,277/1,478 Services and positioning
Website/account link 1,273/1,478 Profile destination
Account creation date 1,386/1,478 Account age
Followers 1,386/1,478 Audience
Following 1,386/1,478 Profile context
Total posts 1,386/1,478 Accumulated activity
Listed count 1,386/1,478 Platform context
Protected flag 1,386/1,478 Access state
Latest post date 1,298/1,478 Recency
Latest post text 1,298/1,478 Message
Likes 1,298/1,478 Response
Replies 1,298/1,478 Discussion
Reposts 1,298/1,478 Redistribution
Quotes 1,298/1,478 Quoted sharing
Impressions 1,298/1,478 Returned exposure value
Reply/repost/quote flags 1,298/1,478 Content attribution

Of the 1,386 records with a resolved account, 1,298 also contain a latest-post date: 93.7%. This makes recency a useful companion to the audience figure in this returned record set. Description text is available in 1,277 records, providing wording to compare with the website and sector label.

In the electrician sample, five of eight accepted X accounts had latest recorded posts more than a year old. That points to an existing-profile maintenance issue, rather than evidence that electricians should rush to add another X account. An owner can decide whether to refresh the profile or concentrate current project updates on a channel they already maintain.

The reported programme cost was $19.38. Requests, submitted candidates and accepted business accounts are different units; they are shown separately. Counts for likes, replies and impressions describe the returned latest post, not a campaign average or a rate of winning enquiries.

Aggregate field catalogue · Electrician platform comparison

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

YouTube

YouTube revealed the difference between having a channel and having a video library

The retained receipts record 820 submissions and 1,956 YouTube quota units. The export contains 766 result records: 616 with a resolved channel and 582 with a latest-video date.

YouTube used the Data API route. Its contribution was different from a social-profile check: it supplied the size of the video library, accumulated channel views and the latest video’s title, date and response. These fields let an analyst distinguish a channel page from visible work a customer can actually watch.

What was captured

Captured field Records with a value / returned records What it contributes
Resolved channel identity 616/766 Channel matching
Channel title 616/766 Business presentation
Channel description 478/766 Services and content focus
Subscribers 616/766 Audience
Subscriber-hidden flag 616/766 Interpreting audience availability
Total videos 616/766 Content library
Total views 616/766 Accumulated channel viewing
Channel creation date 616/766 Channel age
Latest video date 582/766 Recency
Latest video title 582/766 Subject matter
Latest video views 582/766 Viewing of that video
Latest video likes 569/766 Response
Latest video comments 546/766 Discussion
Short-format flag 582/766 Format context
Country 316/766 Geographic context

Of the 616 resolved channel records, 582 contain a latest-video date—94.5%. Latest-video views are available for all 582, while likes are available for 569 and comments for 546. Showing those denominators avoids treating the absence of a response field as zero engagement.

A channel’s total views and its latest video’s views answer different questions. The first describes accumulated viewing across its history; the second describes one piece of material. The report keeps them separate so a large historic library cannot silently become a claim that the business is publishing actively now.

For an electrical contractor, video can demonstrate a completed job or explain a service. The dataset supports comparing how businesses present that material through titles, descriptions and dates. The electrician sample itself contains only three accepted YouTube accounts, so it supports a description of those accounts rather than a sweeping recommendation for the whole trade.

The programme recorded no YouTube cash charge. Quota units still measure API consumption; they are not a dollar amount or a count of videos. Subscriber-hidden state is retained alongside subscriber values and should be respected before making audience comparisons.

Aggregate field catalogue · Electrician platform comparison

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Companies House

Companies House linked 261 prospects to exact company records

All 4,703 prospects in the August pilot were processed; 261 matched the approved normalised-name-and-postcode rule. Every matched company also had people-with-significant-control evidence in the retained source.

Pilot outcome Records
Prospects processed 4,703
Exact automatic company matches 261
Unmatched under that rule 4,442
Matched companies with PSC evidence 261

The automatic match rate was 5.55%. Its purpose was to establish an exact company link, not to judge the proportion of local businesses that were incorporated. The basic-company snapshot was dated 1 August and the PSC snapshot 14 August 2026.

What the match added

The pilot connected a prospect identity and postcode to an authoritative company record, then retained matching status and PSC coverage. Its output was a separate company-enrichment workbook with matched, unmatched and review material. It was not silently joined into every business row in the qualification master.

For a practitioner, this is a distinct stage from searching for a trading website. A trading name can lead to the correct website while still requiring a separate legal-identity match. The retained exact matches provide that corporate context without changing the website and social observations.

For the case studies, company-age or size comparisons must use an established company link or a clearly labelled platform-reported field. Account creation date is a different measure. Keeping those distinctions in the source design prevents a plausible-sounding story about younger firms from being built on the age of a social profile instead.

Source: the August qualification closeout and the Companies House pilot receipt, including reconciliation of all 4,703 dispositions and the 261 exact matches. Identifiable company and PSC records are not included in this reader edition.

Sources and reading the figures

These figures come from retained project receipts and outputs. Field counts describe populated values in returned records, including repeated observations; they are not counts of unique businesses. A returned error item is reported separately from a returned profile. Blank fields are not converted into zero. Completeness flags, ownership decisions and qualification scores are derived after collection, not supplied as scores by the scraper. No additional collection was performed for this edition.

Source material: September provider-consumption receipts, platform raw-record exports in the combined research database, and the verified August qualification closeout where explicitly stated. Programme-wide reported costs and individual collection-window costs are kept separate. Identifiable source records remain private.

Sources are the retained project editions and their receipts. Named batches, programme totals and record types retain their original scope. Nothing was collected again for this prototype.

Workflows · from search to evidence

Find the business.
Build the evidence.
Make the next move clearer.

A practical account of agentic prospection: choosing the search method, defining the audience, retaining website evidence and qualifying social accounts at scale.

Parallel work. One connected record.
01 / The acquisition experiment

Same target. A different way to get there.

The reported trials targeted 300 businesses. Changing how the agent collected them reduced elapsed collection time, while people still defined the scope and judged the result.

Trial timings reported by the project owner. These are elapsed collection times, not a controlled human-versus-agent benchmark or a guarantee of identical output quality. Five concurrent runs are a proposed trial: 90 ÷ 5 gives 18 minutes with perfect scaling. Around 15–20 minutes is the target; rate limits, retries and consolidation may add time. Plan capacity still needs checking before that run.

The human work

Choose the market, define useful categories, agree the evidence and approve the boundaries. Investigate exceptions and decide what the findings mean for a business.

The agentic work

Repeat the searches, capture sources, reconcile records and route gaps into the next collection step. Scripts make the same checks repeatable across the batch.

Scope first. Then release the work.

The Prospection Time workflow defined the town, exact search geography, catalogue and collection method: agent-led scraping, Firecrawl, or two concurrent Firecrawl runs. ONS population supplied town-size context and helped set the collection budget. A recorded queue and approval step kept the chosen scope attached to the work.

Inside the acquisition experiment

Which searches returned results?

Compare every keyword across the towns in the acquisition workbook. A number is the candidate count returned by that query; Failed is a recorded query failure.

Return rate = queries with at least one candidate ÷ recorded queries. This measures query returns, not successful website scrapes. Candidates may repeat across keywords. A dash means no record; Bovingdon is absent from the B and C tabs.

Workbook snapshot · 11 September 2026. Watford built-up area in C is displayed under Watford. View the query-performance source ↗

02 / Who were we looking for?

Three catalogues. Different working hypotheses.

A, B and C grouped professions before collection. The hypothesis was that different kinds of business would have different operational gaps and different opportunities for automation.

Group A · 41 profession labels

Trades, automotive, personal care and beauty

21.3%

without an own-business website recorded

722 of 3,391 matched businesses

Group B · 40 profession labels

Hospitality and events, transport and hire, facilities, industrial supply and repair

16.3%

without an own-business website recorded

439 of 2,697 matched businesses

Group C · 40 profession labels

Clinics and healthcare, property, business and professional services

12.2%

without an own-business website recorded

361 of 2,968 matched businesses

That first comparison supports one part of the hypothesis: the recorded website gap is larger in A than in C. It does not establish how much automation a business needs. A working website can coexist with slow enquiries, manual administration or an inactive social presence.

How this comparison was calculated

Matched the retained business records’ profession labels against the approved A, B and C catalogues: 41, 40 and 40 labels. Each business is counted once within each matched group. Businesses can match more than one group, and these groups do not cover every retained record, so the totals should not be added together.

“Without a website recorded” means the main record is not classified as “Business website”. Directory and high-street entries do not count as the business’s own website. This is the same main-record basis used by the explorer; it does not include the separate follow-up search for website links on social profiles.

03 / Website qualification

Capture once. Keep using the evidence.

Direct HTTP scripts retained website HTML without provider credits. The saved page could then support contact extraction, service information, social-link discovery and later assessment without fetching it again.

2,383

domains with HTML retained

From 2,893 attempted domains in the documented August campaign. This is one campaign, not the full study’s capture total.

5,423

raw social links found

Reconciliation reduced repeated links and URL variants to 4,008 canonical account candidates on 1,625 businesses in that campaign.

The fallback route handled different gaps. Exa searched for missing website destinations; candidate verification checked the match. Firecrawl captured difficult sites that ordinary retrieval had not resolved. The named difficult-site batch retained pages from 559 of 607 domains.

A captured page was not automatically accepted as the correct business website. The round closed with reconciled results and an explicit unresolved tail, rather than treating every failed retrieval as proof that no website existed. Zero provider credits applies to the direct lane, not to labour or infrastructure.

04 / Social qualification

Turn a profile link into usable evidence.

Make and Apify workflows, together with X and YouTube APIs, supplied profile and publishing information that could be linked back to the business record.

Collect and connect

Account identity, biographies, contact fields, followers or subscribers, dated posts and available responses. Reconcile duplicate account links and distinguish readable own-business accounts from shared, unsuitable or unresolved candidates.

Compare consistently

Use the same reference date for recency, compare audience size within each platform and keep missing dates separate. These are retained snapshots: newest-post recency is not a measure of posting frequency or audience growth.

Explore the social evidence → See what each tool returned →
02 / How the picture was built

A search result is just the beginning.

Three phases connected the business identity, its website and the evidence on its social accounts.

01 · Prospection

Find the business.
Keep the source.

Profession and location searches supplied the starting list. Records were organised and consolidated so the same business could be followed into the next phase.

17 fields

The original round handed over 4,703 business records with names, locations, links, contact details and source references.

02 · Qualification

Turn a destination
into useful detail.

Website capture supplied the content, contact routes, technical features and social links behind each assessment. The original round expanded those same 4,703 records to 60 fields.

60 fields

03 · Social qualification

Connect the profile
to the work.

Account detail and dated posts added audiences, descriptions, contact information and activity. Website and social evidence could then be read together for the same business.

272,063

Populated cells in the current social-account export, across 53 fields.

Meet the tools behind the research ↗
RESEARCH RECORD01 / 03

Business identity

Original round · 4,703 records

Illustrative record structure · no individual business data

05 / From evidence to scoring

Different scores answer different questions.

The website quality score and the wider qualification scores are separate measures. Their scales and inputs need to stay visible.

/10

Website quality

The explorer’s recorded website assessment. The original model used weighted checks for HTTPS and mobile readiness (2 each), structured data and an enquiry form (1.5 each), analytics, modern image formats and content depth (1 each).

The score describes detected website features. It is not a Google review rating, a full accessibility audit or a measure of business performance.

/100

Combined qualification

The wider rubric brings together website qualification /16, social qualification /14 and business qualification /6. Earned points across the 36 factors are normalised to 100.

This is the stored Agentic score. It assesses recorded digital and contact evidence, not a proven level of AI readiness or the value of an automation project.

16

Website factors

Own-site presence, security, mobile and content signals, contact and social links, title, description, heading, indexability, video and explicit motion.

14

Social factors

Six own readable platform accounts, activity within 30 days, response on the newest post, audience against its platform median and profile completeness.

6

Business factors

Google listing, graded star rating, at least ten reviews, email, phone and a matching website across sources.

What the scores can—and cannot—tell us

Most qualification factors earn one point when their rule is met. Google stars use a graded point: 5.0 earns 1; 4.5–4.9 earns 0.75; 4.0–4.4 earns 0.5; below 4.0 or unrated earns 0.

Several rules award no point when evidence is not found. That can reflect missing collection as well as a real business gap. Read the score alongside evidence coverage, account ownership and capture dates. HTML checks are proxies: a viewport tag does not prove a good mobile experience, and a detected form may be a newsletter form.

The qualification rubric’s 30-day activity check is distinct from the explorer’s 90-day comparison. Historical social scores are retained separately and are not substituted for the current qualification /14.

A repeatable process, with the evidence still attached.

Define the search. Capture and reconcile. Enrich the record. Qualify the evidence. Then use the results to choose a practical next step.

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Sources and scope

Approved search-led A and Places B/C catalogues, version 1.0.0; retained combined business view; August qualification round closeout; current qualification evaluator 0.6 and its 36-factor rubric. Catalogue comparison calculated from the retained 8,976-record study. Timings are owner-reported observations; the five-run estimate has not been tested.

Inside the finding