Looking to find companies similar to an existing client or uncover innovative startups in a specific sector or niche?
This blog showcases how you can quickly and efficiently pinpoint similar companies important to you and your business using The Data City platform.
Why identifying similar companies is important
Finding similar businesses is an essential task for many researchers and decision-makers. Whether you’re seeking market insights, conducting B2B lead generation, or searching for new investment opportunities, knowing how to quickly and accurately identify similar companies can be incredibly useful.
At The Data City, we help our customers understand what companies do. Our real-time database of UK companies allows users to go beyond the limitations of static platforms and outdated data to find and understand companies better than ever. Within our platform, there are several ways to identify similar companies.
Here are three ways you can use The Data City platform to find similar companies
1. Similar Companies
One of our newer features is the updated Similar Companies tab. As the name suggests, this is a perfect way to investigate a single company you’re interested in and discover competitors or suppliers operating in the same space.
This feature provides a breakdown of the top similar companies, their similarity scores, and other key financial and company information.
How to use Similar Companies
Similar Companies can be accessed via company pages within the platform. For every company with a matched URL, covering over 1.5 million UK companies, we provide a list of similar companies.
These pages can be reached through EXPLORE, where you can apply dynamic filters such as industry type, location, keywords, growth data, and investment information to build detailed company lists.
For example, to find gaming companies in Leeds, you can filter by the Gaming RTIC and set the location to Leeds, providing a list of over 40 gaming companies.
By clicking the ‘Full Info’ button on a company like XR Games, a VR gaming studio based in Leeds, you can access its detailed company page. On this page, you’ll find financial performance, growth rates, investments, and the Similar Companies tab.
The Similar Companies tab provides a list of ten results, showing company name and number, website, social links, estimated turnover, employee count, location, and a link to their full profile.
For XR Games, as you might expect, we see several gaming companies, including Fallen Planet Studios, a game developer specialising in XR, and Preloaded, a BAFTA-winning immersive games studio.
How it works
This feature has been re-developed using cutting-edge semantic search powered by large language models (LLMs).
This advanced approach moves beyond simple keyword matching to understand concepts and relationships between words, helping identify companies with similar activities. It’s a fast and effective way to expand your research and access in-depth data on those businesses.
Interested in the details? Read more on our technical blog.
2. Smart Search
For broader searches, The Data City platform also includes the Smart Search feature, which allows users to search the entire UK database using a phrase, sentence, or concept.
If we wanted to broaden our search in the XR and VR gaming space, we could use a key phrase like “immersive games studio working in XR, connected play and emerging technologies” taken directly from the Preloaded website.
Smart Search provides a comprehensive list of up to 500 companies matching the input. These results go beyond traditional keyword matching, finding companies based on context and meaning.
This feature can help uncover companies when discovering new sectors or when refining and broadening search results. It also allows users to refine their results using filters and export them to EXPLORE for further analysis.
XR, connected play and emerging technologies”
You can find out more about Smart Search in our full technical blog.
3. ML List Builder
For in-depth research, the platform offers the ML List Builder, which uses proprietary machine learning algorithms to classify companies and map industries.
By adding a handful of seed companies, users can train the system to refine their list by including positive examples and excluding irrelevant ones.
This process creates robust, tailored lists. ML List Builder is particularly effective for mapping markets, conducting detailed sector research, and building a comprehensive understanding of a niche.
Try it for yourself
By now, you’ve seen a few ways The Data City platform helps you better understand companies and use key tools to find those working in a similar space.
The platform allows several ways to uncover similar companies, giving you access to real-time data and tools that enhance your insights and processes.
But there’s so much more to explore. If you’d like to try out our Similar Companies tools and see our data in action, sign up for a free trial today.
