SOS Scraper - Corporate Death Signal Aggregator

SOS Scraper - Corporate Death Signal Aggregator

Scan any domain for corporate death signals: DNS expiry, dead social links, missing privacy pages, and more. Feed it a list of domains and get back a risk scorecard for each business. No browser needed, export to CSV, JSON, or Excel.

A dead website is a lagging indicator. This Actor reads the public signals that appear months before a business fails: expiring domains, deleted social media profiles, missing legal pages, and stale copyright dates. Feed it a list of company domains and it returns a structured risk assessment for each one. It is built for due diligence analysts, KYB workflows, and anyone who needs to spot a dying business before their creditors do.

Who uses it	What they scrape SOS Scraper for
KYB and compliance analysts	Screen a portfolio of counterparties for early failure warnings before a quarterly review.
Credit risk teams	Flag borrowers whose domains are about to expire or whose online footprint is shrinking.
Investment researchers	Check a target company's public web health as one signal in a pre-deal due diligence checklist.
Business development teams	Filter a lead list and deprioritize prospects that show signs of going dark.

What it does

This Actor collects public web signals from a list of domains and returns a flat risk scorecard for each business.

• 🔎 DNS expiry check: flags domains expiring within a configurable warning window.
• 📉 Social link rot detection: finds broken or missing links to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
• 📄 Legal page audit: checks for the presence or absence of a privacy policy and terms of service page.
• 📅 Copyright staleness: reads the site's copyright year and flags anything older than the current year.
• ⚙️ Configurable expiry window: set the expiry warning days from 1 to 365 to match your risk policy.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with SOS Scraper data

🏦 Automate KYB portfolio monitoring.

A compliance team runs a monthly batch of all counterparty domains through the Actor and reviews only the ones that trigger a risk flag.

📉 Pre-screen a credit applicant list.

A lender feeds a new application list into the Actor and deprioritizes any business whose domain expires within 30 days.

🔍 Spot acquisition targets in distress.

An investment analyst scans a sector watchlist and flags companies with stale copyright dates and missing social profiles as potential distressed assets.

📊 Enrich a B2B lead database.

A sales operations team appends web health signals to their CRM leads and routes high-risk domains to a manual review queue.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
Early warning signals	DNS expiry, missing legal pages, and dead social links that appear before a business fails
Batch processing	Feed in up to a million domains per run and get one row per business
Fixed schema	Every domain returns the same fields so you can pipe the results straight into a risk model

How it compares

No other Store actor targets SOS Scraper the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	SOS Scraper - Corporate Death Signal Aggregator	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When SOS Scraper changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a list of domains, set a maximum number of businesses to process, and define the DNS expiry warning window that triggers a risk flag. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "domains": [
    "blockbuster.com",
    "toys-r-us.com",
    "sears.com",
    "kodak.com",
    "radioshack.com"
  ],
  "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
  "domains": [
    "blockbuster.com",
    "toys-r-us.com",
    "sears.com",
    "kodak.com",
    "radioshack.com"
  ],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.01067 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.07
1,000 results	$10.67
10,000 results	$106.70

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the SOS Scraper - Corporate Death Signal Aggregator.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to SOS Scraper through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/sos-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that your domain list is formatted correctly, one domain per line without http:// or paths. Also verify that the maxItems value is not set to zero.

Why is the DNS expiry flag not triggering?

The domain may have a registration period longer than your warning window, or the WHOIS record may be privacy-protected and not return an expiry date. Try increasing the expiryWarningDays value.

Why are all social links showing as missing?

The site may load social links via JavaScript after the initial page load. This Actor reads the static HTML of the homepage. If the links are injected dynamically, they will not be detected.

The run is taking too long for a large domain list.

Each domain requires a network request. For very large lists, consider splitting them into smaller batches and running them in parallel across multiple Actor instances.

Why is the copyright year showing as stale when the site looks current?

Some sites hardcode a copyright year that is not updated automatically. The Actor reads the year as it appears in the page source. A stale year is still a useful signal even if the site appears active.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What signals does this Actor check?	It checks DNS expiry dates, the presence of privacy policy and terms of service pages, the copyright year on the site, and whether links to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube resolve or are missing.
How many domains can I scan in one run?	You can set the maximum up to 1,000,000 domains per run. The Actor processes them sequentially and returns one row per domain.
What does the DNS expiry check do?	It looks up the domain's WHOIS expiration date and compares it to the current date. If the domain expires within your configured warning window, the Actor flags it as a risk signal.
Does this Actor visit every page on the site?	No. It fetches the homepage to detect social links, legal page links, and the copyright year. It does not crawl the entire site.
Can I use this for KYB and KYC workflows?	Yes. The signals this Actor collects are commonly used as one input in a broader Know Your Business process. It does not replace an official business registry check but adds early warning indicators.
What happens if a domain does not resolve?	The Actor records the domain as unreachable and returns whatever signals it could collect, such as the DNS expiry date if available.
How do I set the expiry warning threshold?	Use the Expiry Warning Days input field. The default is 90 days. Any domain expiring within that many days from the run date gets flagged.
Does it check all social media platforms?	It checks for links to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube on the homepage. It reports whether each link is present, missing, or broken.
What export formats are supported?	You can export the results to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify dataset tab.
Can I schedule this to run automatically?	Yes. You can set a recurring schedule in Apify to run the Actor daily, weekly, or monthly against a fixed list of domains.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SOS Scraper. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.