Industries ranging from agriculture to finance are classified into various categories and then assigned codes. This categorization of industries organized by NAICS (the North American Industry Classification System) codes is industry NAICS data.
This data provides key information on a region’s diverse industry sectors, business establishments, retail trade, county business patterns, wholesale trade patterns, and economic strengths.
The NAICS codes are defined by North American federal government organizations. The primary source of data is the websites of these government and international organizations. Historical NAICS Data can be downloaded and used, while the real-time NAICS sector data is available through feeds and APIs.
Independent business registries can also provide NAICS data, and web scraping tools can collect the information available online. Using additional tools to lookup more details or new companies is a good idea.
The main attributes of NAICS data are the digit NAIC codes, including the levels for specific subcategories. For example, the NAICS category of Mining has the two-digit code 21. The Metal Ore Mining subcategory has the code 2122. Gold Ore and Silver Ore Mining subcategory code is 21222, within which Gold Ore Mining code is 212221.
The additional attributes include industry-specific information, such as the industry group, the number of companies registered in the category, the estimated number of employees, and the annual revenue.
Typically, the data available from the government and international classification data websites is accurate, but it may not be complete. Comprehensive information about small businesses may not be available, and the taxonomy may not be updated. For use in analytics, you need to test the data for completeness and timeliness.
For data collected from other sources, you can test the accuracy, timeliness, and how it matches your requirements.
To test the quality of the data:
Most of the small, medium, and large enterprises use this data to review specific industry categories. The most recent data can help assess the health of the industry or economy in general.
NAICS data is also used to enrich other types of company data for a number of B2B use cases.
Considering that the primary source of NAICS data is the government and international organizations, you need to verify if the vendors use any other data sources and their credibility. For additional sources and the use of web scraping tools, testing for data accuracy is critical.
NAICS data is similar to Company Registry Data, Business Website Data, and Company Funding Data. You can use these categories of data for B2B Marketing and B2B data enrichment.
You can find a variety of examples of B2B and company data in the Explorium Data Gallery.
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The principal use of the industry NAICS classifier data is in determining the general economic health of the country. This data can also be leveraged to gauge the strengths of the specific industry segments. The data is used to a great extent in B2B marketing and enriching other types of B2B data.
Industries that commonly use NAICS data include consumer goods or CPG, retail, eCommerce, banks, insurance, financial services, hi-tech, technical services, public administration, food services, health care, real estate, waste management, forestry, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing.
The quality of the vendors depends on the credibility of their sources and how they deliver the data quality.