Yelp Scraper — Businesses & Reviews

Turn Yelp searches or business URLs into business, review, owner-reply, contact, and sentiment intelligence.

Scrape Yelp businesses and full review threads without login: from business URLs, keyword+location search, or Yelp search URLs. Ratings, photos, owner replies, sentiment, contact enrichment, and analytics included.

All examples below use fictional DEMO-* identifiers, reserved .test domains, and masked contact details. They do not represent real people, listings, products, or companies.

🚀 What this Actor does

• Flexible collection: Direct businesses, Search, Review collection, Enrichment & analysis.
• Structured output: clean JSON records organized into overview, businesses, reviews views.
• Production-ready: concurrency, retries, proxy support, limits, and source-aware diagnostics are exposed through the Actor input.
• Easy automation: run from the Apify Console, API, schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, or any HTTP client.

🎛️ Modes and workflows

Mode or workflow	What it does
Direct businesses	Resolve exact Yelp business URLs.
Search	Discover businesses from keyword + location or exact Yelp search URLs.
Review collection	Fetch review text, ratings, media, and owner replies.
Enrichment & analysis	Add public contacts, sentiment, review analytics, and incremental date filters.

💡 Common use cases

• Local business lead generation
• Review and owner-response analysis
• Competitive and reputation monitoring

📥 Input schema

Configure the Actor in the Input tab or send the same JSON through the API. Fields not needed for your workflow can be omitted.

Field	Type	Description	Default
directUrls	array	Direct Yelp business page URLs (or aliases), e.g. https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco.	—
searchTerms	array	What to search for on Yelp, e.g. "coffee", "plumbers", "sushi". Combined with each location below.	—
locations	array	Where to search — city, ZIP, or area, e.g. "San Francisco, CA". Each search keyword runs in each location.	—
searchUrls	array	Paste ready-made Yelp search result URLs (with filters applied) to expand into businesses.	—
scrapeReviews	boolean	For every business found, also collect its reviews (full text, rating, author, photos, owner replies).	true
maxReviewsPerBusiness	integer	Cap on reviews collected per business. 0 = all.	20
reviewSort	string	Ordering for collected reviews. Allowed: relevance, newest, oldest, highest, lowest, elites.	relevance
reviewRatings	array<string>	Keep only reviews with these star ratings (1–5). Leave empty for all.	[]
reviewKeyword	string	Keep only reviews mentioning this keyword/phrase.	—
reviewLanguage	string	Language code to prefer for reviews (e.g. en, es, fr).	en
translateReviews	boolean	Translate non-matching reviews into the selected language.	false
sentiment	boolean	Add a sentiment score and label to each review.	false
enrichContacts	boolean	Pull emails and social profiles from the business's own website.	false
reviewAnalytics	boolean	Emit a per-business rollup: average rating/sentiment, rating distribution, top keywords.	false
onlyNewerThan	integer	Skip reviews created at/before this Unix timestamp — useful for scheduled monitoring.	0
maxItems	integer	Global cap across businesses + reviews + analytics. 0 = unlimited.	200
maxBusinessesPerSearch	integer	How many businesses to take from each search keyword/URL.	20
dedupe	boolean	Save each business/review only once per run.	true
proxyConfiguration	object	Yelp requires residential proxies; the default is tuned for reliable access.	{"useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]}
maxConcurrency	integer	Businesses processed at once.	5
maxRetries	integer	Retries for a failed Yelp request.	5
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	Maximum time for one request.	30

▶️ Example input

{
  "searchTerms": [
    "independent bakery"
  ],
  "locations": [
    "Berlin, Germany"
  ],
  "maxBusinessesPerSearch": 25,
  "scrapeReviews": true,
  "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 20,
  "sentiment": true
}

📦 Output schema

Each successful item is written to the default dataset. Select a dataset view in the Apify Console or export the full dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

overview — Overview

A compact table for fast scanning and export.

Fields: dataType, primaryPhoto, businessName, rating, reviewCount, authorName, text, url

businesses — Businesses

Structured businesses records for this Actor.

Fields: primaryPhoto, businessName, rating, reviewCount, priceRange, categories, phone, address, city, state, photos, website, url, scrapedAt

reviews — Reviews

One record or grouped payload for reviews, depending on the source schema.

Fields: businessName, rating, authorName, authorLocation, text, date, sentimentLabel, ownerReply, photos, url, scrapedAt

📤 Example output

{
  "businessName": "Demo Bakery",
  "rating": 4.7,
  "reviewCount": 218,
  "priceRange": "$$",
  "categories": [
    "Bakeries",
    "Coffee & Tea"
  ],
  "phone": "+49 30 XXX XXXX",
  "address": "100 Example Street",
  "city": "Berlin",
  "website": "https://example.test",
  "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/demo-bakery"
}

Missing source values are returned as null, empty arrays, or documented availability/status fields; the Actor does not invent unavailable source data.

🔌 API example

Replace the placeholder with an Apify token and send the same input used in the Console:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trakk~yelp-scraper/runs?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["independent bakery"], "locations": ["Berlin, Germany"], "maxBusinessesPerSearch": 25, "scrapeReviews": true, "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 20, "sentiment": true}'

For synchronous integrations, use the run-sync-get-dataset-items API endpoint. For larger jobs, start an asynchronous run and consume its default dataset when the run succeeds.

🧩 Automation and exports

• Schedule recurring runs from the Apify Console.
• Trigger downstream systems with webhooks when a run succeeds or fails.
• Reuse named monitoring keys or stores where the selected workflow supports change tracking.
• Export dataset views to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS, or access items through the Apify API.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a login or browser session?

Use only the inputs shown in the Actor schema. If authentication or cookies are supported, the relevant encrypted field is explicitly available in the Input tab; otherwise no account is required.

Why can some fields be empty?

Source pages vary by region, content type, privacy settings, and availability. Optional enrichment also depends on the selected mode. Empty values are preserved honestly instead of being guessed.

How should I run this at scale?

Start with a small representative input, inspect the dataset and cost, then raise item limits and concurrency gradually. Use Apify Proxy when the schema exposes it, and use schedules plus monitoring keys for recurring collection.

Is the example data real?

No. Every example in this README is intentionally fictional and uses demo identifiers, reserved domains, or masked contact values.