Better Business Bureau Scraper — BBB.org Business Directory

Scrape BBB.org business profiles by category (or name) and location. Returns business name, phone, address, categories, BBB profile URL and accreditation status by default — no proxy needed. Turn on scrapeDetails to also pull BBB rating, complaint count, accreditation date and business hours straight off each business's profile page — fields the default search view leaves empty.

What you get (list mode — scrapeDetails:false)

Field	Description
businessName	Business display name
bbbRating	BBB letter grade — null in list mode
isAccredited	BBB accreditation status
phone	Phone number as listed
addressRaw	Full address
categories	Business category labels
bbbProfileUrl	Canonical bbb.org profile URL
logoUrl	Business logo image URL
scrapedAt	ISO-8601 UTC scrape timestamp
parse_confidence / warnings	Parse-quality envelope

Detail wedge (scrapeDetails:true)

Adds one extra request per business (its BBB profile page) and populates:

Field	Description
bbbRating	BBB letter grade (e.g. "A+")
complaintsCount	Number of BBB complaints on file
complaintsSummary	Short complaint-activity summary
accreditationDate	Date BBB accreditation began
hours	Business hours

How it works

1. GET bbb.org/search?find_text=<query>&find_loc=<location>&find_country=<country>&find_type=<Category|Name> — Next.js server-rendered page; the search-result list lives in the page's own __NEXT_DATA__ payload, extracted structurally (no hand-pinned field paths, so a BBB field rename doesn't silently break the parser).
2. scrapeDetails:true → GET each business's profile URL, same structural extraction, for the rating/complaints/accreditation/hours wedge.
3. Normalize → push + charge per result.

curl_cffi (Chrome TLS impersonation), no proxy by default — BBB.org is a public directory, COGS measured ZERO. A request that comes back blocked is automatically retried once through Apify Residential proxy (billed to the run owner, never to us).

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQuery	string	"Restaurants"	Category keyword or business name
searchType	enum	"Category"	"Category" or "Name"
location	string	"New York, NY"	City + state
country	string	"USA"	Directory country
profileUrls	array	[]	Skip search, scrape these profile URLs directly (detail mode)
scrapeDetails	boolean	false	Fetch rating/complaints/accreditation/hours per business
maxItems	integer	20	Max results returned (0 = all available)
proxyConfiguration	object	none	Apify proxy; left empty by default (see above)

PII

BBB detail pages for a sole-proprietor business can carry a "Principal Contact" block with a named individual's personal phone/name. This actor never reads that block — only business-level fields are extracted, so a named person's personal contact info is structurally excluded from the output, not filtered after the fact.

Output sample

{
  "businessName": "Example Plumbing LLC",
  "bbbRating": "A+",
  "isAccredited": true,
  "phone": "(212) 555-0100",
  "addressRaw": "123 Main St, New York, NY 10001",
  "categories": ["Plumbers"],
  "bbbProfileUrl": "https://www.bbb.org/us/ny/new-york/profile/plumber/example-plumbing-llc-0121-12345",
  "logoUrl": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-10T12:00:00+00:00",
  "complaintsCount": 2,
  "complaintsSummary": "2 complaint(s) on file",
  "accreditationDate": "2015-03-01",
  "hours": ["Mon-Fri 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM"],
  "parse_confidence": 0.9,
  "warnings": []
}

Legal note

BBB.org is a public business directory. Business names, phone numbers, addresses, accreditation status and ratings are published by BBB for the explicit purpose of helping consumers find and evaluate businesses. This actor never reads personal-contact fields for named individuals (see PII note above).

Usage statistics

This Actor creates a small, content-free summary at the end of each run. It is used only to monitor reliability and improve this Actor. A copy is saved as USAGE_STATS in your own Apify key-value store, so you can see the exact record created for your run.

Set disableUsageStats to true in the input to opt out. Nothing is sent then; your USAGE_STATS record only says that statistics were disabled.

Only these fields are recorded:

• schema version, Actor name and build number;
• UTC start and finish hour (not a precise timestamp);
• run duration, number of results and time to the first result, each as a coarse range;
• whether the result was empty, the end status, and an error type from a fixed list;
• memory setting and counts of charged events;
• names of the input fields you set, never their values;
• the selected option for input fields that offer a fixed list of choices (for example a sort order).

We do not collect input text, search terms, URLs, domains, usernames, email addresses, names, proxy credentials, tokens, scraped records, output items, raw error messages, stack traces, or hashes of any of those values. Records are kept for no longer than 13 months, used only as aggregated operational statistics, and never sold or shared.

Additional fields (Phase 2)

This Actor also records your Apify user ID, whether Apify marks the account as paying, the size range of list inputs, the selected country when the input offers a fixed list of countries, and one category from a fixed Actor taxonomy. We use these fields only for aggregate reliability, repeat-use and cross-Actor analysis; reports suppress any cell with fewer than five distinct users.

The same disableUsageStats: true input flag turns these fields off too. The user ID is removed after 13 months; we do not export, sell, share, or attempt to re-identify this data.

Run-outcome signals (v2)

To learn whether a run did what it was asked to do, the record also holds a few more coarse ranges and yes/no flags. None of them contains content:

• the result limit you asked for (a range, when the input has one) and what share of it was delivered;
• results delivered per input item you listed (a range);
• output quality as ranges: how fully the result fields were filled, the share of rows that look like errors, the share of duplicate rows, and how many different fields appeared. These are counted in memory while results are saved; no result content is kept;
• how the run was started (console, API, schedule, webhook, another Actor);
• how it ended: stopped by you, timed out, reached the requested limit, stopped by the charge limit, and how many times the platform moved the run;
• if this Actor reports it: how many items to process worked or failed (ranges) and one failure reason from a fixed list;
• a short code made from the names of the input fields you set, never their values.

Repeat-run fingerprint (v2)

When your Apify user ID is recorded (see above), the record also holds an 8-character one-way code made from your input (proxy settings left out) and this Actor's name. It only lets us see that the same account ran the same input again soon after an unsatisfying run; we never see the input itself. It is stored only in the database, never published, and reports use it in aggregate with the same five-user minimum. It is the one exception to the statement above that no hashes are collected, and disableUsageStats: true turns it off.