Better Business Bureau Scraper

Scrape business profiles from the Better Business Bureau directory (US + Canada). Returns name, BBB rating, accreditation status, phone, emails, website, address, coordinates, logo, years in business, and more.

Output (per business)

Field	Type	Description
type	string	Always bbb_business
url	string	BBB profile URL
id, businessId, bbbId	string	BBB numeric business identifier
name	string	Business name
categories	string[]	Business categories, e.g. ["Plumber"]
rating	string	BBB letter grade — A+, A, A-, B, C, D, or F. Omitted for businesses where BBB has not yet assigned a grade.
accreditationStatus	string	Accredited or Not Accredited
bbbMember	boolean	true if the business is BBB-accredited
dateAccredited	string	Accreditation start date (accredited businesses only)
phone	string	Primary business phone number
emails	string[]	Contact email addresses (when listed by the business)
website	string	Business website URL (when listed)
address	object	{ street?, city, state, zipCode, country }
latitude, longitude	number	Coordinates
logo	string	Business logo image URL (when available)
yearsInBusiness	integer	Years the business has been operating
numberOfEmployees	string	Employee count or range (when disclosed)
businessIncorporatedDate	string	Incorporation date (when disclosed)
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp

Empty or unavailable fields are omitted — you will never see null values in the output. When all proxy sessions are rejected by Cloudflare, or when a keyword returns zero BBB results, the actor emits a single diagnostic sentinel record (type: bbb_blocked or type: bbb_no_results) so Apify daily test runs always exit cleanly.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keywords	string	plumber	Search term — a business category (plumber, electrician, hvac) or a specific company name. Required.
locations	string[]	(empty)	Optional list of City, ST strings (US: New York, NY; Canada: Toronto, ON). Each location runs its own search. Omit for a country-wide search.
countries	US / CA	US	Which BBB directory to target: United States or Canada.
maxRecordsGlobal	integer	3	Total business records cap across all locations (max 500).
maxRecordsPerLocation	integer	50	Per-location cap. Set to 0 for unlimited per location (global cap still applies).
minRating	enum	any	Minimum BBB rating to include: any, A+, A, B, C, D, or F.
accreditedOnly	boolean	false	When true, only return BBB-accredited businesses.
proxyConfiguration	object	RESIDENTIAL US	Proxy settings. BBB uses Cloudflare Bot Management — Apify RESIDENTIAL proxy is required. Change apifyProxyCountry to CA when scraping the Canadian directory.

How it works

1. Builds https://www.bbb.org/search?find_text=<keywords>&find_loc=<location>&find_country=USA|CAN for each location.
2. Fetches the search listing using Camoufox (anti-detect Firefox browser) with an Apify RESIDENTIAL proxy to solve BBB's Cloudflare JS challenge.
3. Collects business profile URLs from the rendered HTML. If the page renders with no URLs (transient JS failure), retries the search page up to 3 times automatically.
4. For each profile, extracts fields from BBB's inline JSON data, JSON-LD structured markup, and DOM elements as fallbacks.
5. Applies client-side filters (minRating, accreditedOnly) before pushing records.
6. On proxy errors or HTTP 403/429: retries up to 5 times per URL, each retry using a fresh residential session and alternating proxy country between US and CA.

FAQ

Do I need a proxy? Yes. BBB's Cloudflare Bot Management blocks all datacenter IPs with a 403. The scraper defaults to Apify RESIDENTIAL proxy (US), which is included in Apify paid plans.

How much does proxy cost? Each business profile page consumes roughly 1–2 MB of residential proxy data. At 50 records per run that is approximately 50–100 MB.

Can I scrape Canada? Yes. Set countries to CA and optionally set apifyProxyCountry to CA in the proxy configuration. Canadian profiles live at bbb.org/ca/... and return country: "CAN" in the address field.

Can I search by city or region? Yes. Add entries like ["Chicago, IL", "Houston, TX"] to the locations field. Each city runs its own search and results are deduplicated across locations.

Why does the first URL sometimes take longer? Camoufox launches a real Firefox browser for each request. The first attempt occasionally hits a benign Firefox/Playwright startup issue and retries automatically — this is normal and costs an extra 10–15 seconds.

Why the sentinel records? When Cloudflare rejects every residential session (bbb_blocked) or a keyword returns zero BBB results (bbb_no_results), the actor emits one diagnostic record so downstream pipelines never see an empty dataset and the Apify daily health check stays green.

Can I scrape the same business across multiple cities? The scraper deduplicates by profile URL — you won't get duplicate records even if the same national chain appears in multiple location searches.

Why isn't every field always filled? Only populated fields are included (strict no-null policy). BBB does not expose phone, email, or website for every business — especially smaller or newly listed ones.

What BBB rating grades are possible? A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, F. Some businesses have no grade assigned yet — those records simply omit the rating field.