Yelp Business Search Scraper

Apify Actor that scrapes public Yelp business search results by query + location for legitimate market research and local competitive analysis.

Built with Camoufox (stealth Firefox — DataDome) + Cheerio (Hypernova JSON + DOM merge). Concurrency 1, polite delays, dedupe by biz alias. Apify Proxy RESIDENTIAL (US) required.

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What it does

1. Warms a Camoufox session on yelp.com (DataDome cookie)
2. Opens /search?find_desc=…&find_loc=… pages
3. Parses Hypernova react-root-props and merges DOM card fields (Yelp often nulls JSON blobs)
4. Deduplicates by alias and stops at maxItems

Output fields

Field	Description
name	Business name
rating	Star rating (0–5) when shown
reviewCount	Number of public reviews
categories	Category titles when shown on the card
address	Neighborhood / address snippet when public
phone	Public business phone when shown
url	Canonical https://www.yelp.com/biz/… URL
priceLevel	$–$$$$ when shown
query / location	Inputs used for the run
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp

Yelp frequently omits phone / full street address / price from search cards. Those fields are null when not publicly rendered on the SERP.

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Input

Field	Required	Default	Description
query	✅	—	Search term, e.g. coffee
location	✅	—	City/region, e.g. Austin, TX
maxItems		15	Max unique businesses (cap 200)
includeAds		false	Include sponsored cards
proxyConfiguration		RESIDENTIAL + US	Required

Example input

{
  "query": "coffee",
  "location": "Austin, TX",
  "maxItems": 15,
  "includeAds": false,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "US"
  }
}

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Example output (real run)

Live verification on Apify (2026-07-29): query coffee, location Austin, TX, maxItems: 15. Extracted 11 unique organic businesses (page 2 hit a soft DataDome block; page 1 Hypernova+DOM merge succeeded). Run: Rohs0iZYH3NKnU244.

[
  {
    "name": "Desnudo Coffee",
    "rating": 4.6,
    "reviewCount": 105,
    "categories": ["Coffee Roasteries"],
    "address": "Downtown",
    "phone": null,
    "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/desnudo-coffee-austin-2",
    "priceLevel": null,
    "query": "coffee",
    "location": "Austin, TX",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T06:11:00.495Z"
  },
  {
    "name": "Desnudo Coffee",
    "rating": 4.7,
    "reviewCount": 344,
    "categories": ["Coffee Roasteries"],
    "address": "East Austin",
    "phone": null,
    "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/desnudo-coffee-austin",
    "priceLevel": null,
    "query": "coffee",
    "location": "Austin, TX",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T06:11:00.495Z"
  },
  {
    "name": "Third Coast Coffee Roasting Company",
    "rating": 4.9,
    "reviewCount": 108,
    "categories": ["Coffee & Tea", "Coffee Roasteries"],
    "address": "East Austin",
    "phone": null,
    "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/third-coast-coffee-roasting-company-austin",
    "priceLevel": null,
    "query": "coffee",
    "location": "Austin, TX",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T06:11:00.495Z"
  }
]

Also verified earlier cloud run with 15 items (name/rating/reviews/URL): laxPbeR3GFZ0HNuT6.

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Suggested pricing

Plan	Price	Notes
Pay per result	$1.50–3 / 1,000 results	Occasional local market pulls
Rental	$25–39 / month	Recurring competitor / directory jobs

Residential proxy compute is billed separately by Apify.

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Responsible use / Terms of Service

• Use only for legitimate market research on publicly available business listing data.
• Respect Yelp Terms of Service and applicable local laws.
• Do not harvest personal consumer data, bypass login walls, scrape private profiles, or run abusive high-concurrency traffic.
• Keep concurrency at 1, use polite delays, and prefer RESIDENTIAL proxies.
• You are responsible for compliance with Yelp ToS and your jurisdiction’s rules.

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Tips for reliable runs

1. Always enable Apify Proxy → RESIDENTIAL with apifyProxyCountry: US.
2. Start with maxItems ≤ 15 (~1–2 pages). Page 2+ is more likely to soft-block.
3. If you get 0 items, DataDome blocked — retry later with a fresh residential session.
4. Prefer organic results (includeAds: false).
5. Local apify run fails without Proxy external access — use apify call on the platform.

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Local development

export APIFY_TOKEN=$(grep '^APIFY_TOKEN=' ../.env | cut -d= -f2-)
npm install --registry https://registry.npmjs.org/
apify run

On Apify Cloud:

apify push -f
apify call joseolmedosotoaguirre/yelp-business-search --input '{...}'

Actor: https://console.apify.com/actors/grvX9UcIK9nb4c9BL
Username slug: joseolmedosotoaguirre/yelp-business-search