Uganda Business Directory Scraper

Scrape yellowpages-uganda.com — Uganda's online business directory. Browse any of the site's 48 real categories (hotels, restaurants, banks, hospitals, IT companies, schools, law firms, and more), run a free-text keyword search across every category at once, or fetch specific business profiles by URL, with phone, email, website, social links, address, geo-coordinates, rating, and photos. HTTP-only, no login, no cookies, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: browse a category (byCategory), free-text search across every category (search), or fetch specific listings by URL (byUrl)
• 48 categories — the full set of business categories the site publishes, from Accountants to Universities
• 7 sort orders — newest, A-Z, Z-A, highest rated, most/fewest reviews, random
• Rich contact data — phone, email, website, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn/YouTube/TikTok links
• Location data — full street address, country, and precise latitude/longitude
• Filters — minimum/maximum rating, require phone/email/website, keyword match on name or description
• Empty fields are omitted — a business record only ever contains the fields that business actually published

Output per business

• businessName — business/listing name
• businessType — the business's schema.org type (e.g. Hotel, Restaurant, Computer Store, Local Business)
• category — primary category name (e.g. Hotels)
• categorySlug — primary category's URL slug
• categories[] — full list of category names, only present when a business is listed under more than one category
• tags[] — free-text listing tags the business owner added
• description — full business description
• phone — published phone number(s), verbatim as listed
• email — published email address (only available in byCategory / search modes — see FAQ)
• rating — average visitor rating (0-5), only present when the business has at least one review
• reviewCount — number of visitor reviews, when the business has at least one
• reviews[] — individual visitor reviews, when present: author, rating, text, datePublished
• website — business website URL
• facebookUrl, twitterUrl, instagramUrl, linkedinUrl, youtubeUrl, tiktokUrl — social profile links, when published
• address — full street address as entered by the business
• postalCode — postal/P.O. box code, when published
• country — always Uganda
• latitude, longitude — geo-coordinates, when the business has been geocoded
• mainImageUrl — primary photo
• imageUrls[] — all available photos
• sourceUrl — canonical yellowpages-uganda.com listing URL
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byCategory	byCategory / search / byUrl
category	string	hotels-uganda	Category to browse (mode=byCategory) — one of 48 real site categories
searchQuery	string	–	Free-text keyword to search across every category (mode=search)
sortBy	string	newest	newest / az / za / high_rating / high_review / low_review / random — applies to byCategory and search
startUrls	array	–	Direct business listing URLs to fetch (mode=byUrl)
maxItems	int	30	Max businesses to return (1-300)
minRating	number	0	Minimum rating (0-5). Unrated businesses always pass
maxRating	number	5	Maximum rating (0-5). Unrated businesses always pass
requirePhone	boolean	false	Only include businesses with a published phone number
requireEmail	boolean	false	Only include businesses with a published email address
requireWebsite	boolean	false	Only include businesses with a published website
containsKeyword	string	–	Only include businesses whose name/description contains this text

Example: browse hotels, newest first

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "hotels-uganda",
  "sortBy": "newest",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: banks with a phone number, A-Z

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "banks-uganda",
  "sortBy": "az",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "requirePhone": true
}

Example: top-rated restaurants only

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "category": "restaurants-kampala-uganda",
  "sortBy": "high_rating",
  "minRating": 4,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: search for "hotel" across every category

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "hotel",
  "sortBy": "high_rating",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: fetch specific business profiles by URL

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.yellowpages-uganda.com/listings/uganda/central-region/kampala/hotels-uganda/kampala-serena-hotel/" }
  ]
}

Use cases

• Lead generation — build a contact list of Ugandan businesses by industry, complete with phone/email/website
• Market research — analyze the density and geographic spread of a given industry across Uganda
• Travel & hospitality — pull hotel and tourism listings with photos and ratings for a travel app or aggregator
• Local SEO / directory aggregation — enrich your own local-business directory with Uganda data
• Due diligence — verify a Ugandan business's public contact details and web presence before engaging

FAQ

What is the data source? This actor scrapes the public pages of yellowpages-uganda.com, a WordPress-based business directory for Uganda. It's not affiliated with that site — this is an independent, third-party scraper.

Why does email only appear in byCategory/search modes? yellowpages-uganda.com only renders a business's email address on its category-listing/search-result card, not on the business's own detail page. byCategory and search modes visit both the listing card and the detail page and merge the data, so email is available there. byUrl mode only has the detail page to work with, so email is omitted for that mode — this is a genuine limitation of the source site's page templates, not a bug.

Are rating/reviewCount/reviews[] available in byUrl mode too? Yes. rating and reviewCount are read from the listing card when one was fetched (byCategory/search modes); when there's no card (byUrl mode), the actor falls back to the business detail page's own aggregate rating, which is published whenever the business has at least one review. reviews[] (individual reviewer name, rating, text, and date) always comes from the detail page, so it's available in all modes.

How does the free-text search mode differ from containsKeyword? mode=search sends your query to yellowpages-uganda.com's own site-wide search endpoint, so it returns matches across all 48 categories in one run — useful when you don't know (or don't want to restrict to) a business's category. containsKeyword is a client-side filter that narrows results within whichever mode you're already running (byCategory, search, or byUrl) by matching business name/description text. The two can be combined, e.g. mode=search with searchQuery=hotel plus containsKeyword=Kampala to further narrow site-wide hotel matches to ones mentioning Kampala.

Why do some listings have very few fields? Only fields a business owner actually published are included — this actor never fills in placeholder or guessed values. A business with no website simply has no website field.

Are city/region fields available? No — the site's own city/region taxonomy fields are a fixed site-wide default and don't reliably reflect each business's actual location (confirmed: businesses outside Kampala still carry the site's default "Kampala" taxonomy value). The address field (free text, as entered by the business) and latitude/longitude (individually geocoded per business) are accurate and are what this actor exposes instead.

How fresh is the data? Every run scrapes the live site in real time — there is no caching layer.

Can I combine multiple filters? Yes — minRating/maxRating, requirePhone, requireEmail, requireWebsite, and containsKeyword all compose together.