how to get business lists by geography

I think that you should try and contact the local city hall may they can send you a list of the business in thier location.

Also you can just copy from other website and add you twist.

Great artists copy

I'm fairly biased because I believe that the pricing my company offers is extremely competitive (just call the competition) and I don't know of any other company that will replace 100% of bad phone numbers and bad addresses.

With respect to pricing, we've shopped our competitors and you can see a snapshot of what they charge here: Competitor Pricing . You'll certainly want to call them for the most updated pricing, but it usually doesn't change much.

As far as judging the quality of the firm, that's sort of tough question to answer. Any company once it hits a certain size is going to get complaints so that's not always going to give you the best idea of what to expect, but it can help. I intentionally offer a 100% replacement on bad phone numbers and bad addresses because I know my lists run 95%-97% accurate and that I don't know of another company that offers it. The reality is that I'm willing to "put my money where my mouth is" on quality, but that doesn't mean there aren't other companies that offer a good product as well.

To get more specific on pricing:

Lists generally come as two forms, either a modeled/compiled list (which is what we offer) that is updated frequently (once a week with us), but that comes at a premium. The other type of a list is more of a bulk/low quality database. It might be older or it may be scraped. For example, Sales Genie compiles their data base and invests millions in keeping it updated as best they can and we have over 300 sources we aggregate our data from so both of us are committed to keeping our lists up to date and accurate (they typically claim 85% accuracy with zero refund on bad phone numbers or bad addresses). On the other hand, you can go to companies like datadepot.biz and get lists for much less money, but the quality of the data is what you'd expect relative to the difference in price. Sometimes it makes sense, but that depends on what you plan on doing with it.

For the sake of those that don't click through on the link, here is the breakdown on the pricing as of the last time we checked (March 2012). For most accurate pricing please contact the vendors directly.

Affordable Marketing Lists - AffordableMarketingLists.com - 888.904.3292
1,000 for $69 (6.9 cents per lead)
2,000 for $129 (6.5 cents per lead)

Cole Lists - ColeLists.com - 800.800.3271
1,000 for $110 (11 cents per lead)
2,000 for $200 (10 cents per lead)

Database 101 Prices - Database101.com - 877.417.0101
1,000 for $150 (15 cents per record)
2,000 for $260 (13 cents per record)

Experian - Experian.com - 888.808.8242
1,000 for $350 (35 cents per lead)
2,000 for $400 (20 cents per lead)

ReferenceUSA - ReferenceUSA.com - 888.808.1113
1,000 for $190 (19 cents per lead)
2,000 for $320 (16 cents per lead)

Sales Genie Prices - SalesGenie.com - 877.708.3844
1,000 for $240 (24 cents per lead)
2,000 for $390 (19.5 cents per lead)

You could search a certain place on Facebook and then see what business appears the results... Also searching on google maps for a certain type of business you will find a lot of them....