Our database is built around company websites. As we visit websites and teach our algorithm to understand what the company does based on the text it contains, our platform empowers you to find companies similar to your Ideal Customer Profile in no time.
Using the right domain as a base for your (Lookalike) search is a matter of trial and error, and sometimes, the search might not yield results.
As for People (Lookalikes); the principle is the same. People (Lookalike) searches are a combination of the people and the company they work for. If the company domain doesn't work, neither will the People (Lookalike) search.
💡 Tip: We generally recommend not to waste time getting stuck on domains/people that don't work, but to experiment with others first.
Still curious? To understand the error messages better, this article outlines what could have gone wrong.
Person not found
You're searching for a person who is not available on the Ocean platform. It could be for different reasons, like if their LinkedIn profile is set to "Private". Check the spelling of your input, or try another person to continue your search.
Invalid domain
The domain you are searching for is invalid, or you're searching for a person that is connected on LinkedIn to a company with a domain that is invalid. Check your spelling, or try another domain/person.
Unsupported domain
The domain you are searching for can't be processed by Ocean. This could be due to different reasons, such as:
The code is not clean 🫧
Have you ever looked at a website's source code? That's what our system is actually reading, not the beautiful image-filled and colorful website that you and I see when we visit. If, underneath the surface, the code is very messy or uses extremely old languages, our system might not be able to read it.
There is not enough data to read 🪫
Pointing back to point 1, our system reads a website's source code. If their website only consists of images, and/or barely has any text for us to read, it's hard to get a grasp of what they do.
They have a blocker set up 🚫
The website has a blocker set up, resulting in that no "machines" can read it. As it's a very costly implementation for a company, it rarely happens and when it does, it's usually reserved for very large companies only.
Crawling domain
The domain you are searching for, or the domain of the company the person you are looking for works at, is being processed (crawled) by Ocean at this very moment. This process usually takes about 15 minutes. Try other domains/people in the meantime, and come back later.
If you're on our search page, the status will update automatically when it's done, to show if the crawl is successful, and you can add this to your search (see below), or if it was unfortunately unsuccessful.
Crawling complete
When the domain has been successfully crawled, and you're still on the search page of the Ocean app, you can add it to the search to regenerate your results. This means that your scroll position will go all the way to the top, and the results will include the new Lookalikes that are now available.