Checking with the Secretary of State to See if a Business Name has Been Claimed

Post #4: Before you buy a URL, get an email address, or print business cards, check with the SOS to see if your name idea has been claimed.

In this Substack, I will walk you through the process of starting, operating, maintaining, and — if needed — selling or closing your own small business.

Today, I will share with you how to check whether the business name has already been registered within the specific state (within the United States) where you might want to set up your new business.

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👉 Subscribe to this Substack if you want to learn how to setup, operate, maintain, scale, etc… a small business. The Journey began with Post #1.

To review:

• You decided on WHAT service or product you want to offer, and you realized WHY you chose this one [Post #1];

• You made a list of IDEAS for potential business names [Post #2]; and,

• You performed a variety of quick web searches to see if any of the names on your list were already claimed [Post #3].

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State Level Business Entity Search

In the United States, the states have their own governments and legal systems. This allows them to regulate business activity within their borders. And, as such, business formation (such as LLCs and corporations) falls under state law rather than federal law.

This is called Federalism.

In other words, when you are searching to find whether a business name exists within a given state, you need to check with that state’s Secretary of State, which is where these kinds of records are kept and administered (by state).

You may be wondering whether it is possible to search all of the United States.

Yes! It is possible…

…but you will have to check with the Secretary of State for all of the United States individually, and one at a time.

If you know that your new business will be going National right away, you may want to get some help with this task, or set aside some time to do the work on your own.

Again, you can check for existing business names for free on every Secretary of State website, across the entire United States. There is no need to pay a service to do this for you (unless you want to, of course).

But, if you are bootstrapping, you may want to do this on your own.

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4 Steps to Conduct a Business Entity Search on a Secretary of State Website

Once you have decided which state you want to start with, here is how to conduct a search with the SOS for that state.