Changelog
Version 4.4.x - Latest Release
Core Technology
Crawlee - Modern web scraping frameworkPlaywright - Browser automation libraryChrome - Headless browser engineApify SDK - Platform integration
Page loading strategy - Uses domcontentloaded instead of networkidle for 5x faster loadingTimeout reduction - Decreased from 60s to 15-20s for quicker failure detectionSmart scrolling - Optimized feed detection and scrolling algorithmSingle retry policy - Fail fast approach, moves to next query immediatelyMemory optimization - Disabled session pool to reduce overhead
Universal Language Detection
Dynamic element finder - Searches all input elements on pageMulti-language keywords - Detects search boxes with keywords in 10+ languagesSmart cookie consent - Finds accept/reject buttons regardless of textNo hardcoded selectors - Adapts to any Google Maps version
Rating formats - Handles both 4.5 and 4,5 decimal notationsReview counting - Multiple selector fallbacks for accurate countsAddress cleaning - Removes country suffix and trailing commasPhone normalization - Strips special characters, keeps digits and basic formattingTimestamp addition - ISO date format for each extraction
Output Structure
Prefixed field names - 01_name, 02_address format ensures column order9 data fields - Name, address, rating, reviews, phone, website, query, date, maps_urlClean text output - Removes Unicode artifacts and invisible charactersCSV/JSON/Excel - Multiple export formats supported
Error Handling
Graceful failures - Continues extraction even if some places failDetailed logging - Clear progress indicators and error messagesScreenshot on error - Base64 screenshots for debuggingProxy detection - Logs proxy usage for transparency
Version 4.0
Apify platform - Native integrationCrawlee framework - Replaced raw PuppeteerPlaywright browser - Better than Puppeteer for automationResidential proxies - Built-in proxy rotation
Features Added
Input schema - User-friendly configuration interfaceDataset schema - Structured output with field definitions100 results limit - Increased from 20 per searchConcurrent processing - Multiple browsers in parallelAPI access - Programmatic control via Apify API
Version 3.0
Architecture
Node.js application - Standalone scraperPuppeteer - Direct Chrome automationManual proxy - External configuration requiredCSV export - Single output format20 result limit - Hard cap on extraction
Version 2.0
Improvements
Modular structure - Separated componentsConfig files - External settingsBatch processing - Sequential queriesBasic logging - Console output
Version 1.0
Initial Features
Basic extraction - Business name and address10 results max - Limited scrapingEnglish only - US Google MapsSingle query - One search at a timeNo proxy - Direct connection 
