Yello UAE Scraper - UAE Business Directory

Scrape Yello UAE (yello.ae) — the UAE's largest business directory with 224,000+ companies. Search any business category and/or emirate/city and get names, addresses, phone numbers, ratings, and verification status. Optionally follow through to each business's full profile page for website, working hours, manager, establishment year, employee count, registration code, categories/tags, description, and photos. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (category and/or city) and detail (direct business profile URLs)
• 110+ curated categories to pick from, or type any custom category slug
• All 7 emirates plus 4 major sub-cities available as a one-click filter (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Al Ain, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Jebel Ali Free Zone, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain, Dibba, Khor Fakkan)
• Sort by relevance, rating, or name (A-Z)
• Filter by "verified businesses only" or minimum star rating (1-5)
• Rich business profiles — full address, GPS coordinates, website (decoded from yello.ae's outbound tracking link), working hours, manager name, establishment year, employee-count bracket, registration code, listed categories, tags, description, photos, products/services, and individual written reviews
• 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 (when profile fetched)
• tags[] — free-text keyword tags the business added (when profile fetched)
• rating, reviewCount — average star rating (1-5) and total number of reviews
• address — full address text (mode=search); street, city, country — structured address (when profile fetched)
• latitude, longitude — GPS coordinates from the search-result map pin (mode=search); precise coordinates from the business profile (when profile fetched)
• verified — yello.ae's own "Verified" badge status
• yearsWithUs — years registered with yello.ae (also available from the search-result card, not only when profile fetched)
• establishedYear — year the business itself was established
• photosCount — number of photos on the business's yello.ae listing
• phone, mobilePhone, fax — contact numbers (when profile fetched)
• website — the business's own outbound website link, decoded from yello.ae's tracking redirect
• workingHours[] — structured opening hours ({day, hours} per weekday; when profile fetched)
• manager — company manager/owner name (when profile fetched)
• employeeCount — employee-count bracket, e.g. "26-50" (when profile fetched)
• registrationCode — business registration code (when profile fetched)
• description — company description (when profile fetched)
• images[], logoUrl — business photos and logo (when profile fetched)
• products[] — products/services listed on the profile ({name, description, price, imageUrl}; when profile fetched and the business has any)
• reviews[] — individual written reviews ({author, rating, title, text, date}; when profile fetched and the business has any)
• lastUpdated, registeredOn — profile last-updated and yello.ae registration timestamps (when profile fetched and the "Verified Business" panel is present)
• searchCategory, searchLocation — the search parameters used (mode=search)
• sourceUrl — canonical yello.ae profile URL for the business
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	search	search (category and/or city) or detail (fetch by URL)
category	string (select)	restaurants	Pick a common category, or custom to use customCategory, or leave empty to browse by city only (mode=search)
customCategory	string	–	Any free-text category slug, overrides category (mode=search)
city	string (select)	–	Emirate/city to search in, or leave empty for nationwide (mode=search)
customCity	string	–	Any free-text city slug, overrides city (mode=search)
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	relevance / rating (highest first) / name (A-Z) — applied client-side across the fetched batch
verifiedOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses with yello.ae's "Verified" badge
minRating	integer	0 (no minimum)	Only return businesses rated at least 1-5 stars
fetchDetails	boolean	false	Also visit each business's profile page for richer data (slower)
businessUrls	array	–	yello.ae profile URLs to fetch directly (mode=detail)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on returned records (1-1000)

Example: search restaurants in Dubai

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "restaurants",
  "city": "dubai",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: highest-rated dentists in Abu Dhabi, with full profiles

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "dentists",
  "city": "abu-dhabi",
  "sortBy": "rating",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: verified 4+ star hotels across the whole UAE

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "hotels",
  "verifiedOnly": true,
  "minRating": 4,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: all businesses in Sharjah (no category filter)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "",
  "city": "sharjah",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: fetch specific business profiles

{
  "mode": "detail",
  "businessUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.yello.ae/company/344843/cafe-torino" }
  ]
}

Use cases

• Local lead generation — build a prospect list of UAE businesses by trade and emirate for B2B outreach
• Market research — measure business density and average ratings for a category across UAE regions
• Directory aggregation — feed structured UAE 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 emirates and cities

Limitations

• sortBy is applied client-side. yello.ae's search-results pages don't expose a server-side sort parameter, so rating/name sorting is applied across the batch of records this run actually fetched, not the entire category.
• verifiedOnly and minRating are applied client-side. A business with no rating on yello.ae is only excluded by minRating (which requires a rating to compare against).
• website reflects the business's own self-submitted link, as-is. yello.ae stores this as an outbound tracking redirect which this actor decodes back to the real destination URL; the destination itself is whatever the business owner entered and is not validated by yello.ae or this actor (occasionally a business lists a social-media page instead of a proper website).
• E-mail addresses and WhatsApp numbers are not included. yello.ae gates both behind its paid "Data Hub" product / a sign-in "Send Enquiry" form; they are not present in the publicly accessible HTML, so this actor cannot populate them.
• reviews[] and products[] are only available with fetchDetails: true (search mode) or mode: detail, and only for businesses that have any — yello.ae's search-results cards only expose the aggregate rating/reviewCount, not individual review text or product listings; both live on the business profile page.

FAQ

What data source does this actor use? It reads the publicly available search and business-profile pages on yello.ae (note: this is yello.ae, not yellow.ae, which is an unrelated parked domain). No account or API key is needed.

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

Why do some businesses have no rating, phone, or website? yello.ae only shows a rating once a business has received at least one review, and only shows contact/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 emirate instead of a single city? Yes — every value in the city dropdown (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Al Ain, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain) is itself an emirate or a major city within one; Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dibba, and Khor Fakkan are additional sub-city areas yello.ae tracks separately.

Can I search all of the UAE at once? Yes — leave city empty (the default) for a nationwide search within a category.

How accurate are the GPS coordinates? latitude/longitude come directly from the business's own yello.ae profile page (only available with fetchDetails: true in search mode, or always in detail mode).

Why is fetchDetails off by default? Fetching each business's full profile page requires one extra request per result, which is slower. Turn it on when you need website, working hours, manager, establishment year, employee count, registration code, categories/tags, description, photos, products/services, or individual reviews.

Does this actor need a proxy or login? No — yello.ae's search and profile pages are served without any anti-bot challenge, so this actor runs entirely on Apify's free plan with no proxy and no credentials.