Deprecated YellowPages Scraper - Cloudflare Unstable

Deprecated / best-effort. YellowPages.com now frequently hard-blocks automated access with Cloudflare. Scheduled health checks are disabled, Slack failure alerts are suppressed, and reliability is not guaranteed. Use this actor only for legacy/manual runs where intermittent failure is acceptable.

Extract business contact data from YellowPages.com when the target allows access. Results can include names, phone numbers, email addresses, websites, physical addresses, ratings, reviews, hours, and more.

What you get

Each result includes:

Field	Example
Business name	"Joe's Plumbing LLC"
Phone	"(512) 555-0142"
Email	"joe@joesplumbing.com"
Website	"https://joesplumbing.com"
Address	"1234 Main St, Austin, TX 78701"
Rating	4.5 (out of 5)
Review count	47
Categories	["Plumbers", "Water Heaters"]
Years in business	12
Hours	Mon-Fri 8am-6pm
Amenities	["Licensed", "Insured", "Free Estimates"]

Who Uses This

• Sales teams and SDRs -- Build targeted prospect lists of plumbers, dentists, lawyers, or any industry in any US city. Get direct emails and phone numbers ready for outreach.
• Marketing agencies -- Pull local business data for client reporting, competitive audits, and territory planning. Ratings and review counts show market positioning at a glance.
• Insurance agents -- Find businesses by industry and location for general liability, workers' comp, and commercial property quotes. Years-in-business and employee signals help qualify leads.
• SaaS companies -- Build industry-specific lead lists for vertical software. Target restaurants, HVAC contractors, auto shops, or any niche with verified contact info.
• Data enrichment teams -- Supplement your CRM with business details, emails, websites, hours, and categories from Yellow Pages.

How to use

1. Enter one or more search terms (e.g., "plumbers", "restaurants", "dentists")
2. Enter one or more locations in city-state format (e.g., "austin-tx", "new-york-ny")
3. Click Start -- the default quick test returns 5 businesses without opening detail pages

Reliable quick-test input

{
  "searchTerms": ["plumbers"],
  "locations": ["boise-id"],
  "maxPages": 1,
  "maxResults": 5,
  "includeDetails": false
}

Turn Include Detail Pages on after the quick test if you need emails, payment methods, and richer profile fields.

Options

• Max Pages Per Search -- Each page returns ~30 results. Set to 1-3 for quick runs, or 0 for all available pages.
• Include Detail Pages -- Enables email extraction and additional fields (payment methods, neighborhoods). Uses more proxy credits but provides richer data.
• Proxy Configuration -- US residential proxies are required (Cloudflare protection). The default Apify RESIDENTIAL proxy group works out of the box.

Cost

Free to try -- every Apify account includes $5/month in free platform credits, enough for a full test run at no cost.

Roughly $0.005 per result using Apify residential proxies. A typical run of 1 page (30 results) costs about $0.25 including the $0.10 platform fee. Detail pages cost slightly more due to additional proxy usage.

Run size	Results	Approximate cost
1 page, no details	~30	~$0.25
3 pages, no details	~90	~$0.55
1 page, with details	~30	~$0.40
All pages (large city)	500+	~$3-6

Output formats

Export results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or push directly to Google Sheets, Slack, email, or any webhook via Apify integrations.

Reliability

YellowPages.com uses Cloudflare, and target-side hard blocks are now frequent even with US residential proxies. This actor is deprecated/best-effort:

• Default input uses a low-pressure US city, 5 results, no detail pages, and Apify RESIDENTIAL US proxy settings
• Built-in recovery still rotates residential IPs and warms up the YellowPages homepage before retrying blocked search URLs
• Hard Cloudflare blocks can still fail the whole run; do not rely on this actor for production lead generation
• Detail-page extraction is slower and more Cloudflare-sensitive than search-result extraction

Use with AI Assistants (MCP)

This deprecated actor can still be called as an MCP tool for legacy/manual use. Expect intermittent failures from Cloudflare hard blocks.

Setup: Add this to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yellowpages": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=pink_comic/yellowpages-scraper"
    }
  }
}

For reliable production workflows, use AutoScrape's other official-source business data tools instead of this deprecated YellowPages actor.

FAQ

Does it extract emails? Yes, when "Include Detail Pages" is enabled. Not every business lists an email, but extraction rate is typically 15-25% of listings.

How many results can I get? Yellow Pages returns up to 30 results per page and up to 100 pages per search. For a broad category in a large metro, expect 500-2,000+ results.

Does it work for all US cities? Yes. Any location listed on YellowPages.com is supported. Use the city-state format (e.g., "chicago-il", "miami-fl").

How fast is it? A single-page search completes in 30-60 seconds. Larger runs with detail pages take 3-10 minutes depending on volume.