Possible Company Search Issue

API Issues
#1

I don’t know if this is universal because it’s trial and error finding examples, but as far as I can tell if you search the registration number of a dissolved company where a new company has since been formed with the same name then you don’t get any results.

There have always been some strange and confusing issues with searching for dissolved companies by name and these persist, however the company number search should yield a result.

As an example: “Brian Baker Limited” is the name of two dissolved and one active company.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02733614
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03639752

Using the beta company search (just because it’s easier to demonstrate with than the API) you end up with the following:

For a name search you only get the current company. This is a pain, and in the old system was inconsistant. Sometimes you got both (this is with the XML gateway, CHD had some ways around this). However, when you search by company number you get:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=02733614 NO RESULT
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=03639752 NO RESULT
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=04839028 RESULT

Those no results should really show the company in question, otherwise it’s impossible to search for it and the only way to find it is if you know it exists and browse direct to the details page.

#2

At the point we loaded the dataset to support the “searching” endpoints (25th February 2015), supporting both the API and the web interface we only loaded 12 months of dissolved companies, which explains why when searching either by name or number for this example you only get one result, as both 02733614 and 03639752 were dissolved many years ago. We, however, loaded the company profile, officer and filing history data for all dissolved companies dissolved within the last 20 years which is why you can access them directly.

The plan is to add all dissolved companies into the search dataset which will remove this anomaly, but we have no concrete timescales for this change.

Is there any update on this dissolved company issue?
#3

Thanks, that all makes sense.