GOC Optician & Optometrist Register Scraper

Search and export the General Optical Council's (GOC) public Specialist Register at str.optical.org — the statutory register of every optometrist, dispensing optician, student optometrist/student dispensing optician, and registered optical business permitted to practise in the UK. No login, API key, cookie, or proxy is required. The actor selects its own network route automatically; you do not configure a proxy.

What this actor does

• Search individual registrants by surname, first name, register type, specialty, address/town, postcode radius, or exact GOC number.
• Search optical businesses by company name, GOC number, or postcode radius.
• Check a list of exact GOC numbers — registrants and businesses can be mixed in one list; the actor detects the prefix, batches the lookups, and reports numbers that were not found.
• Export the full registered-business list (~3,000 businesses) in one run.
• Enrich with profile data — qualifications, town, every published practice address, practice postcodes, and FTP decision PDF links.
• Use multiple surnames, addresses, or company names in one run; each value is searched separately and results are de-duplicated by GOC number.
• Omit empty fields — every emitted field carries real, non-null data.

Modes

Mode	Use it for
registrant	Individuals: name, register type, specialty, address, postcode radius, GOC number
bodyCorporate	Registered optical businesses: company name, GOC number, postcode radius
byGocNumber	Bulk verification of exact GOC numbers; registrants and businesses mixed
allBusinesses	Full registered-business export (~3,000 rows)

registrant and bodyCorporate need at least one search filter. byGocNumber needs gocNumbers. allBusinesses needs no filter.

Output fields

Registrant records (recordType: "registrant")

Field	Description
gocNumber	Official GOC registration number, e.g. 01-12294, D-9396
name	Full registered name
registerType	Optometrist, Dispensing Optician, Student Optometrist, etc.
registrationStatus	Registered, Registered with Conditions, Suspended
registrationDate	Date of most recent registration, ISO yyyy-mm-dd
specialities	Raw specialty text, e.g. Contact Lens Specialty
specialityList	Normalised specialty values, e.g. ["Contact lens"]
specialityCount	Number of specialty annotations
qualifications	Professional qualifications, when published (detail page)
town	Registered town (detail page)
practiceAddresses	First published practice address (detail page)
otherPracticeAddresses	Additional practice addresses (detail page)
practiceAddressCount	Total published practice addresses
practicePostcodes	UK postcodes extracted from all practice addresses
primaryPracticePostcode	First practice postcode
ftpDecisions	FTP decision title(s), separated by ;
ftpDecisionDocuments	{title, url} for each published FTP decision PDF
ftpDecisionCount	Number of published FTP decisions
hasFtpDecision	true when an FTP decision is published
hasConditions	true when the status contains Conditions
isSuspended	true when the status contains Suspended
isStudent	true for student register types
searchTerm	The surname/address that found the record, when the run used more than one search term
sourceUrl	Canonical GOC register profile URL
recordType	"registrant"
scrapedAt	UTC ISO timestamp

Body corporate records (recordType: "bodyCorporate")

The same common fields where applicable, with companyName instead of name. registerType, specialities, and qualifications are omitted because the GOC does not publish them for businesses.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	registrant	registrant, bodyCorporate, byGocNumber, or allBusinesses
surnames	array	[]	One or more surnames (registrant mode)
forename	string	–	First-name contains filter (registrant mode)
soundsLikeSurname	bool	false	Phonetic surname matching
registerType	select	–	Registration category
speciality	select	–	Specialty annotation
addresses	array	[]	Address/town text searches (registrant mode)
companyNames	array	[]	Company-name searches (business mode)
gocNumbers	array	[]	Exact GOC numbers; mixed registrant/business in byGocNumber
postcode	string	–	UK postcode or outward code for a distance search
radiusMiles	int	50	Radius in miles (1–100)
sortBy	select	–	Surname A-Z or Z-A (registrant searches)
fetchDetails	bool	true	Fetch profile details; off is much faster. Ignored in allBusinesses, which is always list-only
maxDetailedItems	int	2000	Cap on records with detail enrichment
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–25,000)

Legacy tasks that send surname, companyName, or address still work: those keys are mapped in code to the new arrays.

Examples

Find optometrists named Smith or Jones, with full details:

{
  "mode": "registrant",
  "surnames": ["Smith", "Jones"],
  "registerType": "Optometrist",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "maxDetailedItems": 100
}

Check a mixed list of GOC numbers:

{
  "mode": "byGocNumber",
  "gocNumbers": ["01-12294", "D-9396", "CO-4310"],
  "fetchDetails": false,
  "maxItems": 10
}

Find contact-lens dispensing opticians near Edinburgh:

{
  "mode": "registrant",
  "speciality": "Contact lens",
  "postcode": "EH1",
  "radiusMiles": 25,
  "fetchDetails": true
}

Export every registered optical business:

{
  "mode": "allBusinesses",
  "fetchDetails": false,
  "maxItems": 3000
}

How it works

The actor sends the same JSON search request as the public register (POST /registrant/list) and parses the returned HTML fragment. Detail enrichment fetches GET /Registrant/{guid}. FTP decision links point at public PDFs on mygoc.azurewebsites.net.

The register returns 5 results per page. Large runs are bounded by maxItems and the platform timeout. The actor streams records, retries transient list errors, caps detail fetches, and falls back to list-only records when the detail pages keep failing.

Limits and accuracy

• The GOC register is live. Counts and records change between runs.
• Detail pages are flaky. The GOC's own detail pages intermittently return HTTP 500 or take tens of seconds. The actor uses short timeouts, a circuit breaker, and list-only fallback, so a run can still complete with list-level fields for the records whose detail page failed.
• A full registrant export does not fit one default run. The register returned 33,359 registrants on 2026-11-05 at a fixed 5 records per page: 6,672 page requests. At the measured cloud rate of about 1.36 s/page that is roughly 151 minutes, far above the default 3,600 s timeout. Even one register type (Optometrist, 19,501) is 3,901 pages, about 88 minutes. Raising maxItems does not remove the page ceiling, and the actor does not ship a chunk/resume cursor; use narrow filters or accept a partial export. The full business register is about 2,973 rows (595 pages, roughly 13.5 minutes) and allBusinesses is deliberately list-only.
• No contact details are published. The GOC register does not expose email, phone, website, gender, languages, home visits, registration expiry, first-registration date, or conditions text. Those fields are not emitted.
• No status filter exists upstream. The actor returns the raw registrationStatus and the derived hasConditions/isSuspended flags.
• Non-Latin search text is rejected. The GOC search silently ignores CJK/emoji/non-Latin text and would return the whole register; the actor refuses those values before sending a request.
• Body corporate sorting is ignored upstream. sortBy affects registrant searches only.
• Historical/erased registrants are not in the public search. They cannot be retrieved from this source.

FAQ

Do I need cookies or an API key? No. The register is public and the actor uses the same public endpoint as the website.

Why are some fields missing? Qualifications, town, practice addresses, and FTP decisions are published conditionally. fetchDetails must be on for those fields, except in allBusinesses, which is list-only. Detail pages can also fail; the actor then emits list-level fields for the affected records. Empty values are omitted, never emitted as null or "None".

What does ftpDecisions mean? Fitness to Practise — a published regulatory decision against the registrant or business. Most records have none.

Can I combine filters? Yes. Surnames, address text, register type, specialty, and postcode are combined with AND on the register. Multiple surnames or addresses run separate searches and are merged.

Why did my GOC number not appear? byGocNumber reports missing numbers in the run status. A number that is not on the current register, or is formatted in a way the actor cannot normalise, will not return a record.

Why does a sourceUrl sometimes show a server error? It points at the live GOC page, which is intermittently unavailable. Reload it; the scraped data is unaffected.

Data source

General Optical Council public Specialist Register: https://str.optical.org. This actor is independent and not affiliated with the GOC.