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Glossary

What Is a Lead Scrape?

Pulling prospect details off web pages with a script, and where a database does the same job.

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A lead scrape is the automated extraction of contact and company details, such as names, job titles, company names and emails, from public web pages into a list you can use for outbound.

A script or tool loads a page, reads the fields you point it at and writes them to a spreadsheet or your CRM. The source can be a business directory, a conference attendee page, a company team page or a social profile.

Why it matters for outbound

Outbound needs a list before it needs copy, and a scrape is the fastest way to build a list from a source nobody sells. A niche directory or an event sponsor page may hold prospects that no data vendor has indexed.

The cost is in the cleanup. Scraped rows arrive without email addresses, with inconsistent titles and with duplicates. You still have to find and verify an email for each row, and the page layout can change and break the script. Many sites also restrict scraping in their terms, so check those before you run one. The how-to guide on scraping a directory walks through the steps.

Example

You find a directory of logistics companies and scrape every listing. The raw output has a company name and a website, and sometimes a contact name.

CompanyWebsiteContactTitleEmail
Acme Freightacme.comJane DoeHead of Sales(empty)
Acme Freightacme.com(empty)(empty)(empty)

The second row is a duplicate with less data. The email column is empty on both. The values are placeholders. To make this list usable you would deduplicate by domain, then enrich each row to fill the title and email. That second step is where most of the work sits.

In LeadOcean data

LeadOcean does not scrape pages. It is a database you query, so there is nothing to build, break or maintain on your side. The hosted MCP server and the REST API at https://api.leadocean.io return records that already carry title, company and email status.

  • POST /v1/people/search and POST /v1/companies/search filter by job title, country, industry and more. Send count=true as a query parameter, with limit set to 1, as a free sizing call.
  • GET /v1/companies/{domain}/people lists the people held for a domain, so you can start from your scraped company list and skip the contact scrape.
  • POST /v1/people/enrich fills a thin row from a linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id.
  • POST /v1/exports writes a list to CSV. The app at app.leadocean.io has an Exports page with a filter builder, a column picker and a price preview.

Each person or company returned counts as one record. The free plan gives 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month. See /pricing.

A scrape still wins when the source is niche and no database holds it. Use it for the company list, then use LeadOcean for the people, their emails and each email's status. The roundup of AI lead gen tools compares tools that combine both steps.

Skip the scrape and search 693M people free

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