GoldenPages Scraper - Ireland Business Directory

Scrape goldenpages.ie — Ireland's leading business directory. Search any business category in any Irish county or city and get names, addresses, phone numbers, categories, ratings, verification status, and social links. Optionally fetch each business's full profile page directly for email, external website, precise GPS coordinates, structured opening hours, photos, and FAQs. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (category + county/city) and byUrl (direct business profile URLs)
• 48 curated categories to pick from, or type any custom category/keyword (goldenpages.ie matches free text like a keyword search)
• All 26 Irish counties available as a one-click filter, plus a nationwide option, in addition to free-text city/town search
• Sort by relevance or name (A-Z)
• Filter by verified-listing badge or minimum star rating (1-5)
• Full Irish character support — fada diacritics (á, é, í, ó, ú) are handled correctly in both input and output, e.g. "Dún Laoghaire"
• Rich business profiles — GPS coordinates, structured opening hours, email, external website, Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn links, Google Maps link, photos, logo, accepted payment methods, and FAQs
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields that were actually found for a business

Output per business

• name — business name
• category — primary listed category, categories[] — all registered categories (mode=search); business type from the site's own structured data (mode=byUrl)
• rating, reviewCount — average star rating (1-5) and number of reviews, where the business has any
• verified, sponsored — goldenpages.ie's own "Verified" badge and sponsored-listing flag
• address — full address as shown on the search listing (mode=search); street, city, region, postalCode, country (mode=byUrl)
• latitude, longitude — precise GPS coordinates (mode=byUrl)
• openingHours[] — structured opening hours ({day, opens, closes} per slot; mode=byUrl, when published)
• phone, email, website — website is the business's own external site, never a goldenpages.ie URL
• facebookUrl, instagramUrl, twitterUrl, linkedinUrl, googleMapsUrl — links the business has published
• images[], logoUrl — business photos and logo
• paymentAccepted[] — accepted payment methods (mode=byUrl, when published)
• faqItems[] — {question, answer} pairs from the business's own published FAQ (mode=byUrl, when published)
• businessId, customerId — goldenpages.ie's internal listing identifiers
• summary — short description shown on the search listing (mode=search); description — fuller description (mode=byUrl)
• searchCategory, searchLocation — the search parameters used (mode=search)
• sourceUrl — canonical goldenpages.ie profile URL for the business
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	search	search (category + county/city) or byUrl (fetch by URL)
category	string (select)	restaurants	Pick a common category, or custom to use customCategory (mode=search)
customCategory	string	–	Any free-text category/keyword, overrides category (mode=search)
county	string (select)	dublin	One of the 26 Irish counties, or ireland for nationwide, or custom to use customLocation (mode=search)
customLocation	string	–	Any free-text city/town, overrides county (mode=search)
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	relevance / az (business name) — applied server-side by goldenpages.ie
verifiedOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses with a goldenpages.ie "Verified" badge
minRating	integer	0 (no minimum)	Only return businesses rated at least 1-5 stars
businessUrls	array	–	goldenpages.ie profile URLs to fetch directly (mode=byUrl)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on returned records (1-1000)

Example: search restaurants in Dublin

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "restaurants",
  "county": "dublin",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: verified hairdressers in Cork, A-Z

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "hairdressers",
  "county": "cork",
  "sortBy": "az",
  "verifiedOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: 4+ star solicitors across all of Ireland

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "solicitors",
  "county": "ireland",
  "minRating": 4,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: custom category and town search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "customCategory": "locksmith",
  "customLocation": "Dun Laoghaire",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: fetch specific business profiles

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "businessUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.goldenpages.ie/rudys-restaurant-blanchardstown-D15/" }
  ]
}

Use cases

• Local lead generation — build a prospect list of Irish businesses by trade and county/city for B2B outreach
• Market research — measure business density and average ratings for a category across Irish regions
• Directory aggregation — feed structured Irish business data into your own local-search product
• Competitor mapping — see who else operates in a category and area, with ratings, verification status, and contact info
• Franchise & site-selection analysis — evaluate service-business coverage across Irish counties

Limitations

• sortBy: "distance" is not exposed. goldenpages.ie's own UI advertises a distance-sort option, but it requires the visitor's live browser geolocation rather than a location name — verified live that it returns 0 results for every location tested (including Dublin, which has 1,929 restaurants under relevance/A-Z sort). Only relevance and az are supported, since both are reliably server-side and honored on every request.
• goldenpages.ie is fronted by an AWS WAF JS challenge on every page, which this actor resolves automatically inside a real browser session (adds a few seconds per request but returns real, complete data every time — confirmed across repeated cloud runs).
• rating/reviewCount are frequently absent. Most listings have not yet received a goldenpages.ie review; minRating above 0 excludes any business with no rating, since there is nothing to compare against.
• website is only populated when the business has published its own external site on the listing; it is never a goldenpages.ie URL (goldenpages.ie's own profile page is always available separately as sourceUrl).
• goldenpages.ie enforces country-based access on its entire domain, including its image CDN (img.goldenpages.ie). All sourceUrl/imageUrl/logoUrl/images[] values are genuine, working links — confirmed 200 with the correct content-type when fetched through Apify's proxy — but a request from outside Ireland without a suitable proxy will see the same block the actor itself works around. This mirrors how the goldenpages.ie website behaves for any visitor, not an actor-specific limitation.
• goldenpages.ie's own search falls back to a generic listing rather than zero results for an unrecognized category keyword. This is the site's own search behavior (confirmed: a nonsense category still returns 20 unrelated businesses under its own "20 results" count), not an actor bug — the actor always returns exactly what goldenpages.ie's search reports. Stick to real business categories/keywords for reliable matching.
• Total result counts above ~1,000-2,000 for very broad nationwide searches (e.g. category: "restaurants", county: "ireland") are capped by maxItems; the actor always walks pages in order and stops cleanly at goldenpages.ie's own authoritative "of N results" total, so results are never duplicated or skipped.

FAQ

What data source does this actor use? It reads the publicly available search and business-profile pages on goldenpages.ie, Ireland's business directory operated by FCR Media. No account or API key is needed.

Is this affiliated with goldenpages.ie? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads publicly accessible pages.

Why do some businesses have no rating, email, or website? goldenpages.ie only shows a rating once a business has received at least one review, and only shows contact/social/website details a business itself provided. Fields with no data are simply omitted from the record rather than shown as empty or null.

Can I search a whole county instead of a single city? Yes — set county to any of the 26 Irish counties. You can also type a specific city/town via customLocation (e.g. "Dun Laoghaire", "Blanchardstown").

Can I search all of Ireland at once? Yes — set county to "ireland" for a nationwide search.

How accurate are the GPS coordinates? latitude/longitude come directly from the business's own goldenpages.ie profile page metadata (mode=byUrl only — search-listing cards don't expose coordinates).

Does this actor need a proxy or login? No credentials are needed. The actor uses Apify's free AUTO datacenter proxy group (included on the free plan) to reliably clear goldenpages.ie's bot-protection layer inside a real browser session.

What's the difference between summary and description? summary is the short, sometimes truncated blurb shown on the search-results listing card (mode=search). description is the business's own fuller description from its profile page's structured data (mode=byUrl).