Thomson Local Scraper

Pull UK business listings from Thomson Local at scale — company names, full postal addresses, phone numbers, websites, emails, categories, opening hours, and trade accreditations, all in one clean row per business. Search by business type and town in plain English, batch dozens of trades and cities in a single run, or paste search-result URLs straight from your browser. Built for UK lead-generation teams, sales and territory planners, and market researchers who need structured local-business contact data without copy-pasting the directory by hand.

Why This Scraper?

• 20 structured fields per business — name, categories, description, phone, extra phones, fax, email, website, street address, locality, postcode, logo image, opening hours, payment options, accreditations, and more, ready for a CRM the moment the run finishes.
• Logo and photo image URLs on featured listings — the image field captures each promoted listing's logo or photo straight from the results page, ready to display in your own lists and dashboards.
• Batch many trades and towns in one run — searchTerms takes a whole list (plumbers, electricians, accountants…), each searched in your chosen UK location. The competing tool accepts a single search term at a time.
• Deep contact enrichment on demand — flip on scrapeContactDetails to pull each listing's website, email, extra phone numbers, opening hours, payment methods, and trade accreditations — data that never appears on the results page.
• Opening hours as a day-by-day map — Monday through Sunday returned as a structured { day: hours } object with full English day names, not a blob of text you have to re-parse.
• Trade-body accreditations captured — memberships and badges such as Gas Safe Registered and the Institute of Plumbing come through in their own field, ideal for vetting qualified tradespeople.
• Result-count caps, not page caps — ask for exactly the number of listings you want with maxResults, and balance multi-trade runs with a per-term cap via maxResultsPerSearch. No more guessing how many pages equals 250 businesses.
• Overshoot-safe capping — the actor keeps the full final page instead of cutting it off mid-way, so you never lose the last handful of businesses to a hard trim.
• Paste any Thomson Local search URL — hand the actor a filtered or sorted view straight from your browser via searchUrls; it reads the business type and location from the link automatically.
• Nationwide UK coverage — search any town, city, or region across the United Kingdom, or leave the location blank for a UK-wide sweep.

Use Cases

Lead Generation

• Build targeted contact lists of tradespeople, shops, and service firms in any UK town
• Capture phone, email, and website for each business in a single pass
• Assemble outreach lists by trade — plumbers, electricians, roofers, accountants
• Enrich thin CRM records with full addresses and opening hours

Sales Prospecting & Territory Planning

• Map every business of a given type across a city or region before a sales push
• Balance prospect counts across territories with per-term result caps
• Prioritise accredited firms (e.g. Gas Safe Registered) for higher-value outreach
• Segment prospects by locality and postcode for route planning

Market & Competitor Research

• Size a local market by counting active businesses in a category and area
• Compare business density across towns and regions
• Track categories, descriptions, and payment options competitors advertise
• Benchmark opening hours and service offerings in your sector

Local SEO & Directory Audits

• Verify a client's NAP (name, address, phone) consistency against the directory
• Audit which competitors appear for a keyword-and-location search
• Spot missing websites or emails to pitch listing-improvement services
• Monitor category tags and descriptions across a client portfolio

Data Enrichment & Integration

• Append postcodes, websites, and emails to an existing supplier database
• Feed clean UK business records into analytics dashboards and BI tools
• Power comparison tools and local directories with fresh listing data
• Keep contact databases current with scheduled re-runs

Getting Started

Simple — one trade in one town

{
    "searchTerms": ["plumbers"],
    "location": "London",
    "maxResults": 100
}

Multiple trades with a per-term cap

{
    "searchTerms": ["plumbers", "electricians", "roofers"],
    "location": "Manchester",
    "maxResults": 300,
    "maxResultsPerSearch": 100
}

Full contact details from pasted search URLs

{
    "searchUrls": [
        "https://www.thomsonlocal.com/search/plumbers/london",
        "https://www.thomsonlocal.com/search/accountants/bristol"
    ],
    "scrapeContactDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 200
}

Input Reference

Search — what to find and where

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	string[]	["plumbers"]	Business types or keywords to look up (e.g. "plumbers", "car dealers", "accountants"). Each term is searched in the location below. Add as many as you like.
location	string	"London"	UK town, city, or region to search in. Leave empty for a UK-wide search, or if your search URLs already include a location.
searchUrls	string[]	[]	Paste Thomson Local search-result URLs directly. The actor reads the business type and location from each URL — handy when you already have searches set up in your browser.

At least one of searchTerms or searchUrls is required.

Options — how much to collect

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum listings to return in total across all searches. Set to 0 for unlimited (a safety cap still applies to prevent runaway paging). The full final page is kept even if it slightly overshoots this number.
maxResultsPerSearch	integer	0	Optional cap on results for each individual search term — useful for balancing results across many terms. Set to 0 for no per-term limit.
scrapeContactDetails	boolean	false	Open each listing's detail page to also collect website, email, extra phones, fax, opening hours, payment options, and accreditations. Much richer data, but slower and a little more costly.

Output

Each business is one flat row. Here's a representative result with contact details enabled:

{
    "name": "Mike Griffin Heating & Plumbing",
    "categories": ["plumbers", "heating engineers"],
    "description": "Family-run heating and plumbing company serving Greater London since 1998.",
    "phone": "020 7946 0123",
    "additionalPhones": ["07973 288275"],
    "fax": [],
    "email": "info@mikegriffinplumbing.co.uk",
    "website": "https://www.mikegriffinplumbing.co.uk",
    "address": "42 Kingsland Road",
    "locality": "London",
    "postcode": "E2 8DA",
    "image": "https://images.thomsonlocal.com/advantage/98/thumb_ff258078.png",
    "openingHours": {
        "Monday": "09:00-17:30",
        "Tuesday": "09:00-17:30",
        "Wednesday": "09:00-17:30",
        "Thursday": "09:00-17:30",
        "Friday": "09:00-17:30",
        "Saturday": "09:00-13:00",
        "Sunday": "Closed"
    },
    "paymentOptions": ["Visa", "Mastercard", "Cash", "Bank transfer"],
    "accreditations": ["Gas Safe Registered", "Institute of Plumbing"],
    "additionalLinks": ["https://www.facebook.com/mikegriffinplumbing"],
    "listingType": null,
    "detailUrl": "https://www.thomsonlocal.com/search/plumbers/london/mike-griffin-heating-plumbing/2862515/02079460123",
    "searchTerm": "plumbers",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-02T14:30:00Z"
}

Core Fields

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Business name
categories	string[]	Category tags for the business. This reflects the search term the listing was found under; when a listing publishes its own extra directory categories, scrapeContactDetails adds them too
description	string	Short business description or sales blurb
listingType	string	Listing tier (e.g. premium, featured) — populated only when the directory flags a paid tier on the listing; otherwise null
detailUrl	string	URL of the listing's detail page
searchTerm	string	The search term this row came from
scrapedAt	string	ISO-8601 timestamp of capture

Media Field

Pulled straight from the results page — no scrapeContactDetails needed.

Field	Type	Description
image	string	Logo or photo image URL — present on featured/promoted listings that supply one

Contact Fields

Website, email, and extra phones populate when scrapeContactDetails is on and the business publishes them.

Field	Type	Description
phone	string	Primary phone number
additionalPhones	string[]	Additional phone numbers
email	string	Contact email address
website	string	Business website URL
fax	string[]	Fax numbers — included only when the business publishes a fax number (uncommon today, so usually [])

Address Fields

Field	Type	Description
address	string	Street address line
locality	string	Town or city
postcode	string	UK postcode

Extra Detail Fields

Populated when scrapeContactDetails is on.

Field	Type	Description
openingHours	object	Day-to-hours map with full English day names (e.g. { "Monday": "09:00-17:30", "Sunday": "Closed" })
paymentOptions	string[]	Accepted payment methods
accreditations	string[]	Trade-body memberships and badges (e.g. Gas Safe Registered)
additionalLinks	string[]	Other links on the listing (social profiles, booking pages)

Tips for Best Results

• Turn on full contact details only when you need email and website — leave scrapeContactDetails off for fast, broad listing sweeps, and switch it on when you need email, website, opening hours, and accreditations. It adds a per-listing lookup, so runs take a little longer.
• Balance multi-trade runs with a per-term cap — set maxResultsPerSearch when you list several business types so one busy category (like plumbers in London) doesn't crowd out the rest.
• Start small to test — run with maxResults of 25–50 first to confirm the data fits your needs, then scale up.
• Paste a search URL to mirror an exact filtered view — if you've already set up a sorted or filtered search on Thomson Local, drop the URL into searchUrls and the actor reproduces that exact view.
• Leave the location blank for a UK-wide sweep — omit location (and use plain search terms) to collect a business type across the whole country.
• Use precise trade keywords — specific terms like "gas engineers" or "commercial electricians" return tighter, higher-quality lists than broad ones.
• Filter for accredited firms downstream — the accreditations field makes it easy to keep only Gas Safe Registered or trade-body-certified businesses for higher-value outreach.

Pricing

From $1.50 per 1,000 results — a clean, flat per-result rate that undercuts other UK directory scrapers. Bronze, Silver, and Gold subscribers pay progressively less; the table below shows total cost at each discount tier.

Results	No discount	Bronze	Silver	Gold
100	$0.18	$0.17	$0.16	$0.15
1,000	$1.80	$1.70	$1.60	$1.50
10,000	$18.00	$17.00	$16.00	$15.00
100,000	$180.00	$170.00	$160.00	$150.00

A "result" is any business row in the output dataset. No compute or time-based charges — you pay per result, plus a small fixed per-run start fee.

Integrations

Export data in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Connect to 1,500+ apps via:

• Zapier / Make / n8n — Workflow automation
• Google Sheets — Direct spreadsheet export
• Slack / Email — Notifications on new results
• Webhooks — Trigger custom APIs on run completion
• Apify API — Full programmatic access

Legal & Ethical Use

This actor collects publicly available business-listing information from Thomson Local for legitimate purposes such as market research, sales prospecting, and lead generation. You are responsible for complying with applicable laws and Thomson Local's Terms of Service. Contact details may constitute personal data under UK GDPR — handle them lawfully, honour opt-outs and marketing-preference rules, and do not use extracted data for spam, harassment, or any unlawful purpose.