Das Telefonbuch Scraper

Das Telefonbuch Scraper

A Apify Actor that scrapes business listings from Das Telefonbuch, Germany's official telephone directory. Each result combines data from both the search results listing and the business detail page, giving you clean, structured contact information in a single pass.

💡 Features

• Targeted Search: Specify the business type or service (search_what) and the German city (search_where).
• Detail Page Enrichment: Every listing is enriched with data from its individual detail page — phone numbers are deobfuscated, Cloudflare-protected emails are decoded, and structured address fields are parsed automatically.
• Rate Limiting: Configurable requests_per_second throttle to manage request load and reduce the risk of blocking.
• Proxy Support: Leverages Apify's built-in proxy integration for reliable scraping.
• Structured Output: Each record includes a structured address object (street, house number, postal code, city) and a scraped_at UTC timestamp.
• Automatic Result Capping: On the first page, the actor reads the site's reported total result count and automatically caps the run to avoid over-fetching.

📥 Input Parameters

Field	Type	Description	Default	Required
search_what	String	The business type or service to search for (e.g., "Autohaus", "elektriker", "heizung").	"elektriker"	Yes
search_where	String	The German city to search in (e.g., "Berlin", "München", "Hamburg").	"nürnberg"	Yes
max_businesses	Integer	Maximum number of listings to save. Set 0 for unlimited (scrapes all available results, up to the site's cap of 500).	0	No
requests_per_second	Integer	Max requests per second for both search pages and detail page fetches. Lower values (e.g., 2–5) are safer; higher values are faster.	5	No
proxyConfiguration	Object	Apify proxy settings. Automatic Apify Proxy is recommended for reliability.	"useApifyProxy": true	No

Note: Das Telefonbuch limits pagination to 500 results (50 pages × 10 entries per page). Results beyond that point are not accessible.

🔹 Example Input

{
  "search_what": "Zahnarzt",
  "search_where": "München",
  "max_businesses": 100,
  "requests_per_second": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

📤 Output Data Structure

Each record in the dataset is a JSON object with the following fields. Data from the detail page takes priority over data from the search listing when both sources provide the same field.

🔹 Example Output

{
  "name": "Mustermann Elektriker GmbH",
  "address": {
    "street": "Musterstraße",
    "house_number": "12",
    "postal_code": "90402",
    "city": "Nürnberg"
  },
  "phone": "0911 123456",
  "fax": "0911 123457",
  "email": "info@mustermann-elektriker.de",
  "website": "https://www.mustermann-elektriker.de",
  "information": {
    "business_profile": "Ihr Fachbetrieb für Elektroinstallationen aller Art.",
    "search_terms": "Elektriker, Elektroinstallation, Nürnberg"
  },
  "scraped_at": "2025-05-01T10:30:00.123456+00:00"
}

🔹 Field Reference

Field	Type	Description
name	String	Business name.
address.street	String	Street name (without house number).
address.house_number	String	House number.
address.postal_code	String	Postal code (PLZ).
address.city	String	City name.
phone	String	Main phone number (deobfuscated).
fax	String	Fax number (deobfuscated), if listed.
email	String	Email address (decoded from Cloudflare protection), if listed.
website	String	Business website URL, if listed.
information.business_profile	String	"Unternehmensprofil" text from the detail page, if available.
information.search_terms	String	"Suchbegriffe" (search keywords) listed on the detail page, if available.
scraped_at	String	UTC timestamp of when the record was scraped (ISO 8601).

Note: Any field may be null or absent if not present on the page.

⚙️ Usage

1. Enter your search terms in the Input tab (search_what and search_where).
2. Choose a proxy mode. Automatic Apify Proxy is recommended for reliable access.
3. Click Start.
4. Access your results under Storage → Dataset.

To get the best results, try your search terms on dastelefonbuch.de first to see which keywords return the most relevant listings.

🎯 Use Cases

• Lead generation and contact harvesting for German businesses.
• Market research and competitor analysis by city or trade.
• Building local business directories.
• Data enrichment pipelines on Apify.

🤝 Other Actors

You can enhance your data processing pipelines by combining this actor with others:

• Gelbe Seiten Scraper — Scrape business listings from Germany's Yellow Pages with support for ratings, opening hours, social media links, and more.
• German Imprint Scraper — Automatically find and extract contact information from German imprint pages ("Impressum").

🔗 Integrations

• Scheduler: Automate daily or weekly runs.
• Webhooks: Trigger downstream workflows on completion.
• API: Programmatic control via the Apify API.
• Composer: Chain with other Actors (e.g., cleaning, enrichment).

🛠️ Maintainer

• Author: Dominic M. Quaiser
• Contact: mail@dominic-quaiser.io
• Website: dominic-quaiser.io