RateMDs Physician Review Scraper

Extract physician reviews from RateMDs doctor profiles with a fast, reliable workflow. Collect rating breakdowns, review text, reviewer context, and pagination metadata in a structured dataset. Built for healthcare reputation monitoring, market research, and analytics-ready reporting.

Features

• Comprehensive review capture — Collect review ratings, comments, dates, and reviewer context from doctor profiles.
• Detailed score breakdown — Gather overall, staff, punctuality, helpfulness, and knowledge ratings per review.
• Smart pagination handling — Continue across review pages until your target count or page limit is reached. If RateMDs' anti-bot refuses a later page, the run still completes with the reviews already collected and a clear warning.
• Clean output records — Remove empty values and avoid duplicate review rows for cleaner downstream analysis.
• Flexible run controls — Set result limits, page caps, and proxy settings based on your workload.
• Anti-bot resilience — Automatically solves the site's Proof-of-Work challenge, rotates browser request profiles and residential proxy sessions on blocked responses, and retries with bounded backoff so profile reviews are captured reliably.
• Multi-source parsing — Reads structured profile data first and falls back to server-rendered review markup, so layout changes do not break extraction.
• Partner review support — Captures partner-sourced reviews when the profile exposes them, with a review_source field to distinguish them from organic reviews.

Use Cases

Provider Reputation Monitoring

Track what patients are saying about specific physicians over time. Use recurring runs to detect shifts in sentiment and service quality trends.

Healthcare Market Intelligence

Compare patient feedback patterns across providers and specialties. Identify strengths, complaints, and positioning opportunities in local healthcare markets.

Patient Experience Analysis

Build datasets for deeper analysis of care quality signals. Review tone, ratings, and consistency to support quality initiatives and internal reporting.

Research and Reporting

Export structured review data for dashboards, audits, and long-term studies. Use historical snapshots to benchmark performance over time.

Lead and Outreach Prioritization

Support agencies and consultants who help clinics improve patient trust. Prioritize outreach using review volume, ratings stability, and visibility patterns.

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
doctorUrl	String	No	https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/	Doctor profile URL to scrape. Set this to the profile you want; the default is the example profile.
results_wanted	Integer	No	20	Maximum number of reviews to collect
max_pages	Integer	No	10	Safety cap for how many review pages to process
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	No proxy	Optional. Residential Apify Proxy is recommended for high-volume or repeated runs. The actor falls back to direct requests if the configured proxy tunnel is unavailable.

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Output Data

Each dataset item contains:

Field	Type	Description
review_id	Integer	Unique review identifier
doctor_id	Integer	Doctor identifier
doctor_name	String	Doctor display name
doctor_specialty	String	Doctor specialty
doctor_slug	String	Doctor slug used in profile URLs
doctor_url	String	Doctor profile URL
overall_rating	Number	Overall score
staff_rating	Number	Staff rating score
punctuality_rating	Number	Punctuality rating score
helpfulness_rating	Number	Helpfulness rating score
knowledge_rating	Number	Knowledge rating score
review_text	String	Full review comment
review_date	String	Review date/time string
helpful_count	Integer	Helpful vote count
has_voted	Boolean	Whether current context indicates voted state
has_flag	Boolean	Whether review is flagged
flagged	Boolean	Whether review is flagged (schema alias)
has_pending	Boolean	Whether review moderation is pending
featured	Boolean	Whether review is featured
visible	Boolean	Whether review is visible
appointment_type	String	Appointment type code
appointment_type_display	String	Human-readable appointment type
rater_initial	String	Reviewer initial when available
rater_is_verified	Boolean	Reviewer verification flag
verified_patient	Boolean	Verified patient flag (schema alias)
authorship_label	String	Reviewer location/context label
rating_request_source	String	Source metadata for the rating
feature_ratings	Boolean	Feature rating availability indicator
location	Object	Associated location metadata for review
comments	Array	Additional comments thread data when present
review_source	String	organic or partner review source
page	Integer	Review page number
page_rank	Integer	Position within page
total_pages	Integer	Total available pages
total_reviews	Integer	Total review count for profile
profile_url	String	Input doctor profile URL
scraped_at	String	ISO timestamp when row was collected

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Usage Examples

Basic Review Collection

Collect a small review sample from a single doctor profile.

{
    "doctorUrl": "https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/",
    "results_wanted": 20
}

Deeper Historical Pull

Collect more reviews by allowing more profile pages.

{
    "doctorUrl": "https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/",
    "results_wanted": 120,
    "max_pages": 20
}

Reliable Production Run

Use proxy settings for large or recurring jobs.

{
    "doctorUrl": "https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/",
    "results_wanted": 200,
    "max_pages": 30,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    }
}

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Sample Output

{
    "review_id": 5634734,
    "doctor_id": 2165038,
    "doctor_name": "Dr. Zahra Mazanderani (Dr.TCM)",
    "doctor_specialty": "Acupuncturist",
    "doctor_slug": "zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca",
    "doctor_url": "https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/",
    "overall_rating": 5,
    "staff_rating": 5,
    "punctuality_rating": 5,
    "helpfulness_rating": 5,
    "knowledge_rating": 5,
    "review_text": "My fertility clinic recommended Dr. Zahra for acupuncture...",
    "review_date": "2026-05-30T02:47:41.610590-04:00",
    "helpful_count": 0,
    "has_voted": false,
    "has_flag": false,
    "flagged": false,
    "has_pending": false,
    "featured": false,
    "visible": true,
    "appointment_type": "0",
    "appointment_type_display": "In-person",
    "rater_is_verified": false,
    "verified_patient": false,
    "authorship_label": "User from Surrey, BC",
    "feature_ratings": false,
    "review_source": "organic",
    "page": 1,
    "page_rank": 1,
    "total_pages": 39,
    "total_reviews": 387,
    "profile_url": "https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/zahra-mazanderani-vancouver-bc-ca/",
    "scraped_at": "2026-05-31T12:46:57.332Z"
}

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Tips for Best Results

Start Small First

• Use results_wanted: 20 for quick validation.
• Confirm data shape before running larger jobs.

Scale in Steps

• Increase results_wanted and max_pages gradually.
• Split very large collections into multiple scheduled runs.

Use Proxy for Stability

• Enable residential proxy for repeated or high-volume runs.
• Direct requests work for many profiles; if a configured proxy tunnel is unavailable, the actor automatically falls back to direct requests.
• Keep inputs consistent across scheduled runs for clean comparisons.

Preserve Historical Insight

• Store periodic snapshots to monitor trend changes.
• Compare rating movement and review velocity over time.

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Integrations

Connect your dataset with:

• Google Sheets — Analyze ratings and comments in spreadsheets.
• Airtable — Build filtered review databases for teams.
• Looker Studio / BI tools — Create trend dashboards and scorecards.
• Make — Trigger automations after each completed run.
• Zapier — Push review insights into CRM or alert workflows.
• Webhooks — Send fresh data to internal systems.

Export Formats

• JSON — Best for APIs and custom pipelines.
• CSV — Best for spreadsheet workflows.
• Excel — Best for business reporting.
• XML — Best for legacy integrations.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many reviews can I collect per doctor?

You can collect all available reviews within the limits you set using results_wanted and max_pages.

Does the actor handle pagination automatically?

Yes. It progresses through review pages until your requested total is reached or no more pages remain.

Why do some records have fewer fields?

Some reviews do not include every optional attribute on the source profile. Only available values are returned.

Can I run this for multiple doctors?

Yes. Run separate tasks per profile URL, or automate multiple runs using schedules and task templates.

How do I improve reliability on large runs?

Use proxyConfiguration with residential proxies and raise limits gradually.

Is duplicate review output prevented?

Yes. The actor deduplicates review records during collection.

Can I use this for ongoing monitoring?

Yes. Schedule recurring runs and compare outputs over time for trend tracking.

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Support

For issues, improvements, or feature requests, use Apify Console support and your Actor issue tracking workflow.

Resources

• Apify Documentation
• Apify API Reference
• Apify Schedules

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Legal Notice

This actor is intended for legitimate data collection and analysis use cases. You are responsible for compliance with website terms, applicable laws, and responsible data handling practices.