RCVS Find a Vet Scraper

Professional scraper for RCVS Find a Vet (https://findavet.rcvs.org.uk/) - the official directory of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Search and extract information about veterinary practices registered with RCVS in the United Kingdom.

💡 Before you run this scraper

Some datasets like this one are already available ready-to-use on bananalitycs.com — download instantly or request custom delivery.

 

Features

• Practice Search: Find veterinary practices by location or keyword
• RCVS Accredited Filter: Option to show only RCVS accredited practices
• Automatic Pagination: Automatically navigates through all result pages
• Detail Pages: Extracts complete contact information from practice detail pages
• Accreditations: Captures RCVS accreditation status and core standards
• Social Media: Extracts social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• PPE Cost Management: apify-cost-protection (CostProtectionManager) handles Pay-Per-Event charging, negative margin protection and free-tier result limiting
• Advanced Logging: apify-sentry-logger for structured logging and Sentry error tracking
• Rate Limiting: Respects server with configurable delays

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keyword	String	""	Search keyword (e.g. "London", "Manchester")
filter_pss	Boolean	true	Filter only RCVS accredited practices (PSS)
max_pages	Integer	10	Maximum number of search pages
max_results	Integer	100	Maximum number of results (0 = unlimited)
include_detail	Boolean	true	Whether to visit each practice's detail page
delay_seconds	Number	0.5	Pause between requests (seconds)
proxy_configuration	Object	Apify residential proxies	Proxy configuration for HTTP requests

Input Example

{
  "keyword": "london",
  "filter_pss": true,
  "max_pages": 5,
  "max_results": 50
}

Generated URL

The search URL is built automatically:

https://findavet.rcvs.org.uk/find-a-vet-practice/?filter-keyword=london&filter-pss=true&filter-choice=&filter-searchtype=practice

Output

Data Structure

The scraper extracts comprehensive information by merging the search results list with the detail page (accreditation data is only visible in the list, contact/address details only on the detail page):

{
  "url": "https://findavet.rcvs.org.uk/find-a-vet-practice/alcombe-veterinary-surgery-w13-9sb/",
  "id": "1219",
  "name": "Alcombe Veterinary Surgery",
  "address": "160 Northfield Avenue, London W13 9SB",
  "full_address": "160 Northfield Avenue, london, W13 9SB, united kingdom",
  "city": "london",
  "postcode": "W13 9SB",
  "country": "united kingdom",
  "phone": "020 8567 4597",
  "email": "ealing@alcombe.com",
  "website": "https://www.alcombe.com",
  "is_accredited": true,
  "core_standards": ["Core Standards (Small Animal)"],
  "development_training": ["VetGDP"],
  "facebook": "//www.facebook.com/@AlcombeVets",
  "twitter": "",
  "instagram": "",
  "scraped_at": "2024-01-20T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Extracted Fields

From Search Results:

• Practice name, address preview, phone, email
• RCVS accreditation status and core standards
• Development & training certifications (e.g., VetGDP)

From Detail Page:

• Full address (street, city, postcode, country)
• Complete contact information and website
• Social media profiles

Search Examples

Scenario	Input
All accredited practices in London	{"keyword": "london", "filter_pss": true}
All practices in Manchester	{"keyword": "manchester", "filter_pss": false}
First 100 accredited practices	{"keyword": "", "filter_pss": true, "max_results": 100}
Deep search with 20 pages	{"keyword": "birmingham", "max_pages": 20}

Use Cases

• Market Research: Analyze veterinary practice distribution across UK regions
• Lead Generation: Build contact lists for veterinary products/services
• Accreditation Analysis: Study RCVS accreditation patterns
• Network Building: Create comprehensive veterinary practice databases
• Competitive Analysis: Monitor veterinary practice landscape

Technical Details

• Parser: BeautifulSoup with lxml
• HTTP Client: httpx (async)
• Rate Limiting: Configurable delay between requests (default 0.5s)
• Error Handling: Comprehensive error tracking with Sentry integration
• Monetization: Pay-Per-Event via apify-cost-protection, event result-item (must be configured with a price under Apify Console → Publication → Monetization)

Support

• Bug reports: GitHub Issues
• Apify Documentation: docs.apify.com

Legal Notice

This scraper is intended for legitimate use cases only. Always respect the website's terms of service and robots.txt. Ensure compliance with GDPR and other data protection regulations when collecting and storing personal information.