West Virginia Secretary of State Business Search

The state of West Virginia makes it relatively simple to look up business information through the website of the Secretary of State. Below we'll walk through the steps for doing this, and show you some additional resources you might not know about.

There are any number of reasons you might need this information. It's absolutely critical when performing due diligence and for Know Your Client (KYC) purposes. If you're only performing these kinds of searches occasionally, West Virginia's search portal allows you to find this information relatively quickly and easily. If you're searching records like these in high numbers, there are some tools you'll want to know about, but we'll come back to that in just a moment.

You can find the Business Entity Search page linked above. The landing page looks like this:

You'll notice right away that the search interface towards the bottom of the page is rudimentary. There are no options for limiting the search, and no advanced search options offered at all.

When you perform the search, you'll be directed to the results page, which looks like this:

The results are delivered 10 at a time, sorted by company name in alphabetical order. You cannot reverse the default order, or sort by another field. Since there is no way to filter results, results include mostly inactive companies.

On the results page, you'll see each company's name (and any previous names), the type of business it is (its legal structure), the city in which it is located, and its current status.

Clicking on the 'Details' link for any of the records will bring you to the Business Entity Details page for that business. Those pages look like this:

In addition to the information you saw on the results page, here you'll find the initial filing date for the company, and the county and state (WV or otherwise). You'll also find a number of fields where the data is coded - Class 'P', in this example, or Business Purpose '4413'. A glossary of these terms would likely be helpful to some people, but alas, there is none to be found.

A bit further down the page, you'll find the names and mailing information for Principals in the business.

Further still, you'll see spots for DBAs (Doing Business As), Names (if there have been name changes), Mergers, Subsidiaries, Amendments, and Dissolutions, where there is information to be had.

Towards the bottom of the Entity Details page, you'll see this list:

The filings for the business are listed here, but there is no option to view or download a scanned copy of the document in question.

West Virginia does offer a Business Entity List Service, which allows you to build and customize lists of businesses registered with the office. This is offered on a fee-for-service basis. West Virginia also offers a Bulk Data Service, allowing users to download bulk business entity and UCC data on file with the Secretary of State. This is only available as a paid subscription service.

West Virginia offers a basic amount of business information at no cost, but their search interface is rudimentary, with no filters at all. If you need to search for hundreds - or even thousands - of these records each month, this would quickly consume a lot of time. Furthermore, Secretary of State data is different from one state to another, so combining and integrating data from multiple states is complex.