IQS Directory Manufacturer Scraper

Scrape IQS Directory - a free, no-login industrial manufacturer & supplier directory covering 200+ product/service categories (bearings, gaskets, CNC machining, electric motors, springs, and more). Get company name, category, city/state, phone, website, description, and profile URL. HTTP-only, no auth, no proxy required.

Data source note

The originally requested target, IndustryNet.com, gates every page containing real company data (category listings and company profiles) behind a reCAPTCHA "Activity Threshold" bot check - confirmed blocked for automated access even with a full headless browser. Per this project's zero-cost reliability policy, it was replaced with IQS Directory, a directory in the same industrial-manufacturer-directory niche whose category and company listing pages return complete, real company data with no login, CAPTCHA, or proxy.

IQS Directory does not offer a site-wide full-text company search. mode=search approximates keyword search by matching your query against the 200+ category taxonomy (e.g. bearing matches Ball Bearings, Linear Bearings) and aggregating companies from every matching category.

What this actor does

• Three modes: byCategory (browse one of 208 categories), search (keyword -> matching categories), and byLetter (browse IQS Directory's full alphabetical company index - every listed company, not limited to the 208 product categories)
• US state filter - narrow results to companies headquartered in a specific state
• Full contact data - company name, category, city, state, phone, website, description, and a direct profile-page URL
• byLetter enrichment - each company is additionally enriched from its own profile page, which lists its full set of self-tagged categories (often several per company) plus street address, postal code, and logo image (when the advertiser uploaded one)
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per company

• companyName
• category, categorySlug - the single category the company was found under (byCategory/search modes)
• categories - the company's full self-tagged category list, from its profile page (byLetter mode only)
• city, state
• streetAddress, postalCode - from the company's profile page (byLetter mode only)
• phone
• website
• description
• logoUrl - company logo image, when the advertiser uploaded one (byLetter mode only)
• profileUrl - IQS Directory company profile page
• recordType: "company", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byCategory	byCategory / search / byLetter
category	string (select)	ball-bearings	One of 208 product/service categories (mode=byCategory)
searchQuery	string	bearing	Keyword matched against category names (mode=search)
letter	string (select)	A	Company name's first letter, A-Z (mode=byLetter)
state	string (select)	-	Filter to companies in a specific US state
maxItems	int	30	Hard cap on emitted records (1-1000)

Example: browse a category

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "gaskets",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: keyword search across matching categories

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "hydraulic",
  "state": "OH",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: browse all companies starting with "M"

{
  "mode": "byLetter",
  "letter": "M",
  "state": "CA",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Use cases

• Procurement / sourcing - build a shortlist of manufacturers for a given product category
• Sales prospecting - find companies by category and state for outreach
• Market research - map supplier density by category and geography
• Lead generation - export contact-ready company records (phone, website)
• Competitive analysis - see who else serves a given manufacturing niche

FAQ

Is IQS Directory free to use? Yes - it's a public manufacturer directory funded by supplier advertising; no login or account is required to browse listings.

Why 208 categories and not more? That's the full, confirmed live taxonomy on iqsdirectory.com as of this actor's build date (/category1/ through /category5/). Categories are added rarely; the list is curated directly from the site's own alphabetical category index.

Why does search return categories, not raw company text search? IQS Directory itself has no public full-text search across companies - only category browsing. Matching your keyword against the category taxonomy is the most reliable equivalent without resorting to unofficial/undocumented endpoints.

Are all companies in a category returned? Each category page has up to two tiers - a small "leading companies" list and a larger comprehensive list - both are fetched and merged (deduplicated), which is the complete company set IQS Directory publishes for that category.

Does every record have a phone number and website? In testing across multiple categories, most listed companies have both - but not every company advertiser fills in a phone/website, and byLetter mode's per-company profile pages show phone/website less consistently than the paid byCategory listing placements. If a field isn't present on the source page, it's simply omitted from the record rather than emitted as null/empty.

What's the difference between byCategory/search and byLetter? byCategory/search walk IQS Directory's 208 curated product/service category pages - fast (no per-company fetch needed since phone/website/description are embedded directly in the listing page) but scoped to companies that page-owners assigned to those categories. byLetter walks IQS Directory's full A-Z company index (tens of thousands of companies site-wide, including many outside the 208-category taxonomy) and fetches each company's own profile page for enrichment - slower per-record, but the only way to reach the complete company universe and each company's full self-tagged category list.