PagineGialle Scraper - Italian Business Directory (Yellow Pages)

Scrape PagineGialle.it — Italy's leading business directory ("Pagine Gialle" = Yellow Pages). Search any business category in any Italian city, comune, or postal code (CAP) and get names, addresses, phone numbers, categories, ratings, opening hours, and websites. Optionally fetch each business's full profile for its precise rating, structured weekly opening hours, VAT number, and social media links. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (category + city) and detail (direct business profile URLs)
• 60+ curated categories to pick from, or type any custom category slug
• Filter by minimum star rating (1-5), "has at least one rating", "open right now" (computed live from published hours), or "has a website"
• Full Italian character support — à, è, ì, ò, ù, apostrophes (e.g. "Sant'Angelo") are handled correctly in both input and output
• Rich business profiles — precise rating, structured weekly opening hours, VAT number (Partita IVA), social media links, all with fetchDetails: true (on by default)
• Search by postal code (CAP) as well as city/comune name
• Sort by relevance, distance, or popularity — same ordering options as the site's own "Ordina per" dropdown
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields that were actually found for a business

Output per business

• name — business name
• category — the business's listed category
• rating, reviewCount — average star rating (1-5) and number of reviews
• street, zipCode, city, province, region, address (combined address text from the listing)
• phone, phoneNumbers[] — primary phone number, plus any additional numbers
• website — business website
• vatNumber — Italian VAT number (Partita IVA), when profile fetched
• socialLinks — object with facebook/instagram/twitter/linkedin/youtube/tiktok URLs, when profile fetched and published
• openingHours — structured weekly schedule (day name → list of "HH:MM - HH:MM" slots), when profile fetched
• isOpenNow — live open/closed status computed from published hours at scrape time (search-listing pages only)
• services[] — listed services/amenities (e.g. "Da asporto", "Ambiente climatizzato")
• description — the business's own listing/profile description text
• searchCategory, searchCity — the category/city you searched for (mode=search)
• sourceUrl — canonical PagineGialle profile URL for the business
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search (category + city) or detail (fetch by URL)
category	string (select)	ristoranti	Pick a common category, or custom to use customCategory (mode=search)
customCategory	string	–	Any free-text category slug, overrides category (mode=search)
city	string	Roma	Italian city/comune name or 5-digit postal code (CAP) to search in (mode=search)
fetchDetails	boolean	true	Also visit each business's profile page for precise rating, structured hours, VAT number, and social links (slower but richer)
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	Result order: relevance (default), distance, or popularity — mirrors PagineGialle's own "Ordina per" dropdown (mode=search)
openNowOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses currently open, computed from their published hours
ratedOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses that have at least one rating
minRating	string (select)	– (no minimum)	Only return businesses rated at least 1-5 stars
websiteOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses that have a website listed
businessUrls	array	–	PagineGialle profile URLs to fetch directly (mode=detail)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on returned records (1-1000)

Example: search restaurants in Rome

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "ristoranti",
  "city": "Roma",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: 4+ star lawyers in Milan, with full profiles

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "avvocati",
  "city": "Milano",
  "minRating": "4",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: plumbers open right now near a postal code

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "idraulici",
  "city": "00100",
  "openNowOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 40
}

Example: rated dentists with a website, fast (listing-only fields)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "dentisti",
  "city": "Napoli",
  "ratedOnly": true,
  "websiteOnly": true,
  "fetchDetails": false,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: fetch specific business profiles

{
  "mode": "detail",
  "businessUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.paginegialle.it/ristorante-la-favola-rm" }
  ]
}

Use cases

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

FAQ

What data source does this actor use? It reads the publicly available search and business-profile pages on paginegialle.it, Italy's leading business directory (Italiaonline S.p.A.). No account or API key is needed.

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

Why do some businesses have no rating, phone, or website? PagineGialle only shows a rating once a business has received at least one review, and only shows contact 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 by postal code instead of a city name? Yes — the city field accepts Italian postal codes (CAP, 5 digits) as well as city/comune names.

Why is fetchDetails on by default? The search-listing page already includes name, address, phone, category, rating and description, but the precise 1-decimal rating, structured weekly opening hours, VAT number, and social links only appear on the business's own profile page. fetchDetails: true fetches that page for each result. Turn it off for a faster run when you only need the core listing fields.

How is the rating computed? When fetchDetails is on (default), the rating is read directly from the business profile's published "X.X è la valutazione degli utenti" text — the exact value PagineGialle itself displays. In listing-only mode (fetchDetails: false), the rating is derived from the same visual star-fill percentage the listing page uses, truncated to one decimal.

Does this actor return email addresses? No. PagineGialle does not publish email addresses directly on business listings or profiles — only a "Scrivici" (contact us) web form. This actor never fabricates an email field.

Why do PagineGialle links (sourceUrl) sometimes fail to open for me? paginegialle.it restricts access at its CDN edge to IP addresses geolocated in Italy (a "geo-restriction", not a broken link or bot-block). The actor itself is unaffected — it runs on Apify's cloud infrastructure, which reaches the site normally — but if you personally browse to a sourceUrl from outside Italy you may see a 403 page. The business's own website field is not affected by this restriction.

Does this actor need a proxy? No proxy is required for normal use. The actor automatically escalates to Apify's free AUTO datacenter proxy (Italy-pinned) only if it is temporarily rate-limited.

Is there a limit on how many results I can get for one category+city search? For very popular category+city combinations in large cities (e.g. "ristoranti" in Roma), PagineGialle's own search-results pagination genuinely runs out of distinct businesses after a handful of pages — deeper pages start repeating the same listings rather than surfacing new ones. When this happens the actor detects it automatically and stops cleanly (no duplicate records, no wasted requests) rather than hanging or fabricating data. For a wider net on saturated categories, narrow your search with a more specific city, comune, or postal code (CAP) instead of a broad category alone.

What about opening hours or "open now"? On the search-listing page, isOpenNow is computed live from PagineGialle's own published weekly schedule at the moment of scraping (Europe/Rome time). With fetchDetails: true, the full structured weekly openingHours schedule from the business's profile page is also included.