How Does ZeroBounce Find Emails?
ZeroBounce finds business email addresses through a combination of company domain pattern detection and 99.6% accurate email validation. After determining several email address patterns that have a high confidence rating, those addresses undergo the email verification process to determine if the address is indeed valid, invalid, or another risky email type.
ZeroBounce offers two types of Email Finder searches - a domain-based search and a name-based search. The domain-based search attempts to discern the most likely email pattern in use. Compare this to a name-based search, which allows ZeroBounce to plug in the person's first and last name along with the domain to find a verified result.
How do domain-based email finderⓘ searches work?
A domain-based email finderⓘ search allows you to search for business email addresses by only providing the domain.
Often, your business knows that there are potential leads at a company that can benefit from your product, but you aren't sure how to contact someone. By providing a domain (their company name), you can find possible patterns for email addresses used by current employees.
Here's how it works:
- You enter the domain or company name.
- The ZeroBounce email finder uses proprietary technologies to search in real-time to search for possible patterns.
- The email finder returns a few possible results along with a corresponding confidence score. High confidence scores indicate that an email pattern is likely valid and used by people at the company.
Be aware that it's possible to receive several "High confidence" results as more than one email address pattern may be in use.
This type of search is a great way to look up emails for contacts you may already know. If you met "John Smith" at "Email Company" at a recent event, and a high confidence pattern recommends "first.last@company," his email is likely john.smith@emailcompany.com.
How does a name-based email finderⓘ search work?
A name-based email finderⓘ search uses the same elements as a domain search but is able to leverage the person's name for the address.
The process works like this:
- You enter a company domain, and the email finder searches for possible patterns.
- Once it has a selection of probable patterns, it adds the person's name appropriately to each pattern (i.e., john.smith@company, john@company, smith.john@company, etc.).
- Then, ZeroBounce uses email verification to determine the validity of each possible email address. The email finder continues searching and testing until it finds a valid result.
![Name-based ,[object Object], search results showing a valid email address for Swen Vincke: swen.vincke@larian.com.](/docs/assets_next_docs/docs/faq/emailFinder2.webp)
Similar to the domain email finderⓘ search, your results may still show multiple high-confidence patterns if the company uses alternate email address structures.
It's critical to note that ZeroBounce never uses stored or processed customer information for any email finderⓘ searches. Every instance of an email finderⓘ search occurs 100% in real time using internal proprietary technologies, including real-time email validationⓘ.
ZeroBounce will always be fully compliant with data privacy and security regulations, giving you the confidence that your data is always in safe hands.