Website Contact Extractor

Pull the public contacts a company already put on its own site — email, phone, social links — straight from the page markup. No browser, no JavaScript execution, no login: just the HTML the server actually sends, read the same way a search engine would.

What you get

• Company-owned email, phone number and social profile links (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp) pulled from the homepage plus contact and about pages (and /impressum automatically for .de/.at/.ch sites).
• A separate, clearly-labeled bucket for third-party or unverified email addresses instead of quietly handing them to you as the company's own — most scrapers don't do this, and it is the single most common way "contact lists" turn out wrong.
• An honest empty result with a real reason when a site can't be read: JavaScript-only pages, bot protection, a domain that plain doesn't exist, or its own robots.txt saying no — see FAQ below.
• robots.txt respected on every domain: any page the site's own User-agent: * rules disallow is never fetched, and which ones were skipped is reported back to you. If robots.txt itself is inaccessible, rate-limited, truncated, or returns a server/access error, the Actor fails closed without fetching target pages and returns a free partial row.
• Runs on Apify: schedule it, monitor it, call it from the API, export to JSON/CSV/Excel or push straight into your own pipeline.

How to run it

1. Click Try for free — no card needed on the free plan.
2. Paste your list of company domains (or full URLs — the path is ignored) into Domains.
3. Hit Start and pull the results from the dataset (UI, API or webhook).

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.005 per run start + $0.002 per domain with a confirmed contact found. Domains where nothing could be confirmed — including every honest "couldn't check this one" row — are returned but never charged. 1,000 domains with contacts found = $2.00 + the one-time start fee.

Input

Field	Required	What it does
domains	yes	Domains or full URLs to check. Max 100 per run.
checkPages	no	Override which subpages to visit (default: homepage, /contact, /contact-us, /about).
maxPagesPerDomain	no	Hard cap on pages visited per domain (default 5, max 6).
maxConcurrency	no	How many domains to process in parallel (default 10).

{
    "domains": ["smithlawfirm.com", "apify.com"]
}

Output

{
    "input": "smithlawfirm.com",
    "domain": "smithlawfirm.com",
    "found": true,
    "emails": ["neil@smithlawfirm.com"],
    "thirdPartyEmails": [],
    "phones": ["+13147254400", "(314) 725-4400"],
    "socials": {
        "facebook": "https://www.facebook.com/neilsmithlaw",
        "instagram": null,
        "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithlawfirm",
        "twitter": null,
        "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnmF7KeV9tejnAxREAhsRg",
        "tiktok": null,
        "whatsapp": null
    },
    "sourcePages": ["/"],
    "unreachablePages": ["/contact-us: http 404", "/about: http 404"],
    "robotsDisallowed": [],
    "partial": true,
    "error": "partial website check: 2 target page(s) could not be read; contacts may exist on content that was not available",
    "structuredDataFound": true,
    "checkedAt": "2026-07-30T07:43:30.604Z"
}

Field	Meaning
domain	Normalized hostname actually checked.
found	true only when at least one company-owned contact was confirmed — this is the only case billed.
emails	Email addresses on the site's own domain (or a subdomain of it).
thirdPartyEmails	Emails found in the markup that belong to a DIFFERENT domain — a marketing agency's tracking script, a webmaster credit, etc. Shown for transparency, never billed as the company's own.
phones	Phone numbers as posted (from tel: links and page text) — posted, not carrier-verified.
socials	Social profile links found via real anchor tags, one per platform; null where none was found.
sourcePages	Which of the visited pages actually contributed a contact.
unreachablePages	Which visited pages failed to load, and why.
robotsDisallowed	Which of the target pages were skipped because the site's own robots.txt disallows them — those pages were never fetched.
partial	true when at least one allowed target page could not be read or was cut off at the byte-size limit — a result alongside partial:true is evidence from the readable pages, never a claim that the whole site was checked.
structuredDataFound	Whether the page carries genuine Organization/LocalBusiness structured data (not just any schema.org block).
error	null only when the site was fully checked and simply has no public contacts (including a confirmed non-existent domain); a specific reason whenever the check is incomplete. A found:true row can therefore also carry an error when contacts were confirmed on readable pages but another target page failed.

Related tools

Related tools for adjacent workflows in B2B lead generation and data enrichment.

Actor	What it does
Company Hiring Radar	Pair it in the B2B lead generation and data enrichment workflow: Pull every open role a company is hiring for from its public job board (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby) and turn...
B2B Lead Enricher	Pair it in the B2B lead generation and data enrichment workflow: Turn a list of company websites into sales-qualified lead cards: detected tech stack, a rough revenue...
Company Registry Enricher	Pair it in the B2B lead generation and data enrichment workflow: Turn a company name, LEI or UK company number into an official registry card: legal name, status,...
Structured Data Extractor	Pair it in the B2B lead generation and data enrichment workflow: Turn any URL into clean structured JSON — title, description, image, JSON-LD, headings, links, emails and...
Website Tech Stack Detector	Pair it in the B2B lead generation and data enrichment workflow: Detect the technologies a website runs — CMS, ecommerce platform, analytics, marketing/CRM, JS framework,...

FAQ / Limitations

Why did I get an empty result for a real company's site? A few honest reasons: the page is rendered client-side by JavaScript (this Actor reads the HTML the server sends, it does not execute scripts), the site returned an error/challenge page on every path we tried (bot protection), or the site's own robots.txt disallows automated agents on the pages we'd check. All of these come back free, with the specific reason in the error field — never as a silent empty row.

What this is NOT. Not an email deliverability check (pair with an email verifier for that), not a guarantee the phone number is currently in service, and not a claim that a social link is the platform's "verified" account — it is exactly what the company's own page links to.

Found a site this Actor should handle better, or need it adapted to your case? Open an issue on this Actor's page.

Commercial guide: Website Contact Extractor — Evidence-Linked Public Contact Discovery

Turn company websites into source-linked contact cards while separating company-domain contacts, third-party addresses, partial checks, and unverifiable absence.

This guide is written for buyers, operators, analysts, and automation builders. It explains what the Actor observes, how to turn the Dataset into a controlled workflow, and where human verification remains mandatory.

The decision this product supports

Which public contact channel is actually evidenced on the submitted company website, and what must still be verified before outreach?

The Actor reduces collection and first-pass triage work. It does not remove responsibility for source verification or authorize an external business action. The commercial value comes from a structured, repeatable evidence layer: stable identity, observation time, source evidence, confidence, gaps, recommended action, and failure semantics travel with the raw facts.

Who uses it

User	Value
Small-business marketers	Build a reviewable list of public business contact channels from websites already selected for a campaign.
Lead-generation agencies	Enrich client-supplied domains while retaining source pages, robots decisions, contact category, and data-quality warnings.
Sales operations teams	Choose a best observed channel, separate role addresses from personal-style heuristics, and send uncertain rows to manual review.
Local service businesses	Research partners, suppliers, venues, clinics, restaurants, or other businesses from public site information.
Market researchers	Measure public contactability across a bounded cohort without claiming consent, ownership, deliverability, or buyer intent.
Automation builders	Feed evidence-linked contacts into Sheets, Airtable, a CRM staging table, or a review queue through a stable Dataset contract.

Input contract

Input field	How to use it
domains	Required list of up to 100 public domains or URLs. Submitted path/query is ignored so collection stays within a fixed, explainable page policy.
checkPages	Optional list of at most six relative paths. Each path must be empty or begin with a slash.
maxPagesPerDomain	Maximum allowed target pages per domain, from 1 to 6.
maxConcurrency	Parallel domain checks, from 1 to 50. Increase cautiously because source reliability matters more than raw throughput.

Recommended first Input

{
  "domains": [
    "apify.com",
    "example.com"
  ],
  "checkPages": [
    "",
    "/contact",
    "/about"
  ],
  "maxPagesPerDomain": 3,
  "maxConcurrency": 5
}

Start with this bounded example, inspect every Dataset field, and only then expand the scope. Input limits are product controls, not inconveniences: they make cost, completeness, and error handling visible.

Field dictionary

Field or group	Meaning
entityId, domain, inputRef, observedAt	Stable domain identity, normalized target, original input reference, and collection time.
emails, personalEmails, genericEmails	Company-domain email observations and heuristic local-part categories. Personal-style does not mean a verified person.
emailSources, sourcePages, sourceEvidence	The page-level provenance required to inspect where a value came from.
thirdPartyEmails	Addresses observed on the page whose domain does not support a company-owned classification.
phones, socials, bestContact	Other public channels and a deterministic review preference, not a consent or reply-likelihood claim.
contactabilityScore, contactabilityBand	Observed channel richness, kept separate from evidence confidence.
confidenceScore, confidenceBand, confidenceRisks	Confidence that the bounded static-HTML check supports its factual classification.
partial, robotsDisallowed, failureType, retryable	Explicit operational gaps and whether a later retry may produce a more complete result.
recommendedAction, actionPriority, safeToAutomate	Review routing. Outreach is never automatically authorized by this Actor.

Common decision fields

Field	Operational meaning
recordType	The semantic row family. Use it to distinguish a business result from an advisory or terminal record.
schemaVersion	Version of the additive decision-intelligence contract. Pin or validate it in strict consumers.
entityId	Stable entity identity for deduplication and joins. It is not necessarily a legal identifier.
inputRef	The relevant submitted input reference after normalization.
observedAt	When the Actor observed or finalized the evidence. It is not necessarily the source publication time.
firstSeenAt and lastSeenAt	Always-emitted observation boundaries. Stateful monitors use the compatible baseline/current boundary. Stateless rows set both equal to observedAt for the current run; that equality does not establish historical tenure.
freshness	A structured statement about evidence age or availability, not a prediction. Its basis and age unit follow the source-specific field definition.
eventId	For monitors, the stable identity of one observed transition or monitor outcome. It is distinct from entityId.
before and after	For monitors, the bounded comparable snapshots used for the decision. Null means that side of a comparison was not honestly available.
changedFields and changeFlags	Machine-readable monitor deltas and normalized change labels. Empty arrays mean no supported changed field was established, not that every possible real-world fact stayed constant.
materialityScore and materialityBand	Magnitude of an observed monitor change when the Actor can calculate it. Materiality is separate from evidence confidence and may be unknown when the source lacks the required facts.
confidenceScore	Evidence support on a 0–100 scale. It is separate from materiality, lead score, or business value.
confidenceBand	Readable high/medium/low/unknown grouping of evidence support.
confidenceReasons	Observed facts that raise confidence.
confidenceRisks	Missing, partial, ambiguous, inferred, or conflicting aspects that reduce confidence.
confidenceConflict	Explicit consistency warning when structured evidence does not reconcile.
sourceEvidence	Source-linked observations supporting the row. Preserve this during export.
dataGaps	Important evidence the Actor did not observe or cannot establish. Keep these gaps visible in CRM, spreadsheet, and automation exports.
negativeSignals	Machine-readable risks or gaps. A negative signal is not automatically a negative business outcome.
recommendedAction	Bounded review label produced from the available evidence.
actionPriority	Suggested queue priority, not urgency guaranteed by the source.
actionReason	Plain-language explanation for the recommended action.
safeToAutomate	Whether the narrow recommended action is deterministic enough for automation. Organizational policy still applies.
failureType	Normalized terminal or partial failure classification. Null means no classified failure.
retryable	Whether a later retry may legitimately change an operationally incomplete result.
recommendation	Human-readable handling guidance, especially for terminal rows.

Evidence, confidence, and honest boundaries

What the evidence supports

• Company-domain emails are observed in allowed website markup and linked to their source page.
• Role-based versus personal-style is a deterministic local-part heuristic, not identity verification.
• Third-party emails are retained separately instead of being sold as company-owned contacts.
• robots.txt is checked and disallowed target paths are not fetched.
• Partial or unavailable pages lower confidence and prevent a false no-contact conclusion.

What this Actor never claims

• The Actor does not verify that a mailbox exists, accepts mail, belongs to a named person, or is monitored.
• It does not establish consent, lawful basis, legitimate interest, opt-in status, or permission to contact.
• It does not infer purchase intent, budget, seniority, authority, or likelihood to reply.
• It does not bypass robots policy, authentication, private pages, bot protection, or client-rendered content.
• It does not guarantee that every contact exposed by a website is current or complete.

Reading data gaps correctly

A data gap is part of the result. Nulls, partial flags, confidence risks, source failures, and unavailable fields must survive export. Removing these fields makes the remaining facts look more complete than they are. When two sources conflict or a required identity cannot be proven, lower confidence and keep safeToAutomate=false.

Source evidence is not permission

A public source proves only that a value or statement was observable at the recorded time and URL. It does not establish consent, contractual rights, legal status, accuracy after observation, or authorization for a downstream action. Your organization remains responsible for source terms, privacy rules, outreach policy, retention, and human review.

Decision policy and action routing

Action	How to use it
REVIEW_PERSONAL_STYLE_EMAIL	Inspect the source page and verify role, identity, mailbox status, and outreach basis before use.
REVIEW_GENERIC_EMAIL	Treat the role inbox as a public business channel and verify it before sending any message.
REVIEW_PHONE	Confirm context, geography, and applicable calling rules before use.
REVIEW_SOCIAL_CHANNEL	Open the source profile and confirm it belongs to the intended organization.
RETRY_PARTIAL_CHECK	Retry only when failureType and retryable indicate an incomplete technical observation.
NO_PUBLIC_CONTACT_FOUND	Record the bounded result without converting it into a claim that no contact exists anywhere.

Confidence is not attractiveness

confidenceScore answers “how strongly does the available evidence support this factual classification?” It does not answer “how valuable is this lead, property, account, or address?” A high-confidence negative fact may be commercially uninteresting; a low-confidence positive signal may deserve research but not action. Keep the concepts separate in dashboards, exports, and CRM fields.

Why safeToAutomate is conservative

safeToAutomate is intentionally false whenever the next step could amplify an uncertain inference. It may be true only for narrow deterministic actions explicitly supported by the row, such as suppressing an email with invalid syntax. A true value does not waive legal, privacy, consent, contractual, or organizational rules.

Retry policy

• Retry when retryable=true and the failure is operational, such as a temporary source or DNS problem.
• Do not endlessly retry deterministic invalid input, policy refusal, or confirmed absence.
• A retry must preserve the original input reference and must not create duplicate downstream actions.
• Budget exhaustion is not negative evidence about the entity. Resume only the unprocessed scope with an authorized budget.
• A failed Actor run is an operational event. Never transform it into “no listing,” “no contact,” “bad lead,” or “invalid email.”

Commercial use-case playbooks

1. Agency lead enrichment

Goal. Submit a client-approved domain list, preserve inputRef and sourceEvidence, then let a researcher approve the selected channel before CRM import.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

2. Local partnership research

Goal. Collect public phone, email, and social options for a set of nearby businesses, then verify each source page and business identity manually.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

3. Supplier discovery

Goal. Enrich shortlisted supplier websites and route generic role addresses to procurement review. The Actor does not establish supplier quality or commercial willingness.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

4. CRM gap filling

Goal. Match rows to existing company records by normalized domain and update only empty staging fields. Do not overwrite a verified contact with an unverified observation.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

5. Contactability benchmarking

Goal. Compare contactabilityScore across a cohort while reporting coverage, partial rows, and confidence separately.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

6. Public channel audit

Goal. Use sourcePages and robotsDisallowed to explain which parts of each website were actually checked.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

7. Outbound research queue

Goal. Send personal-style and generic emails into separate manual lanes, run mailbox verification elsewhere, then apply consent and suppression policies.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

8. Website remediation review

Goal. For your own properties, use no-contact or JS-rendered findings as a site usability prompt, not proof of a compliance failure.

Recommended runbook.

1. Define the submitted cohort and write down why it is in scope.
2. Start with the smallest useful Input and preserve the exact run ID.
3. Inspect the Dataset overview before exporting anything.
4. Check failureType, retryable, completeness indicators, and confidenceBand.
5. Open the relevant sourceEvidence or source URL for material rows.
6. Apply the recommended action as a review label, not as an instruction to contact, buy, delete, accuse, or publish.
7. Record the analyst's final disposition in the destination system.

Do not skip. A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

Integration recipes

All examples use placeholders. Keep the Apify token in a secret manager and never write it into a Dataset, README, screenshot, or client-side application.

cURL: start a run and wait briefly

curl -sS -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/zinin~website-contact-extractor/runs?waitForFinish=60' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"domains":["apify.com","example.com"],"checkPages":["","/contact","/about"],"maxPagesPerDomain":3,"maxConcurrency":5}'

The run response includes defaultDatasetId. Read clean JSON rows with:

curl -sS "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/$DEFAULT_DATASET_ID/items?clean=true&format=json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN"

JavaScript with apify-client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const input = {
  "domains": [
    "apify.com",
    "example.com"
  ],
  "checkPages": [
    "",
    "/contact",
    "/about"
  ],
  "maxPagesPerDomain": 3,
  "maxConcurrency": 5
};
const run = await client.actor('zinin/website-contact-extractor').call(input);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems({ clean: true });

for (const row of items) {
    console.log({
        entityId: row.entityId,
        confidenceBand: row.confidenceBand,
        recommendedAction: row.recommendedAction,
        safeToAutomate: row.safeToAutomate,
        failureType: row.failureType,
    });
}

Python with apify-client

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("zinin/website-contact-extractor").call(run_input={
    "domains": [
        "apify.com",
        "example.com"
    ],
    "checkPages": [
        "",
        "/contact",
        "/about"
    ],
    "maxPagesPerDomain": 3,
    "maxConcurrency": 5
})

for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items(clean=True):
    print({
        "entityId": row.get("entityId"),
        "confidenceBand": row.get("confidenceBand"),
        "recommendedAction": row.get("recommendedAction"),
        "safeToAutomate": row.get("safeToAutomate"),
        "failureType": row.get("failureType"),
    })

Apify MCP call

{
  "name": "call-actor",
  "arguments": {
    "actor": "zinin/website-contact-extractor",
    "input": {
      "domains": [
        "apify.com",
        "example.com"
      ],
      "checkPages": [
        "",
        "/contact",
        "/about"
      ],
      "maxPagesPerDomain": 3,
      "maxConcurrency": 5
    }
  }
}

Generic webhook consumer policy

1. Trigger on a terminal Actor run event.
2. Confirm the run status is SUCCEEDED before reading business rows.
3. Retrieve rows from defaultDatasetId.
4. Reject or quarantine rows whose failureType is non-null unless your policy explicitly handles that failure.
5. Send safeToAutomate=false rows to a human-review queue.
6. Store entityId, observedAt, sourceEvidence, confidence, action, and the Apify run ID together.
7. Make retries idempotent by keying the destination on the stable entity ID plus the intended observation or event identity.

Where this fits in a practical stack

Destination	Recommended pattern
Apify Console	Use the visual Input form, start the run, then open the default Dataset overview. This is the fastest path for a one-off review and the best place to inspect evidence before automating anything.
Apify API	POST JSON input to the Actor run endpoint, wait or poll for completion, then read the default Dataset through the URL returned by the run object.
JavaScript client	Use apify-client from a Node.js service, pass the same JSON object as the Console Input, and preserve the returned run and Dataset IDs in your own audit log.
Python client	Use apify-client in a Python enrichment job, iterate Dataset items, and route rows by recommendedAction, confidenceBand, failureType, and retryable.
Make	Start the Actor from a scenario, wait for the run, retrieve Dataset items, filter unsafe or low-confidence rows, then insert review-ready rows into the destination application.
Zapier	Use an Apify run action or webhook trigger, fetch Dataset items, apply a Filter step, and send only review-approved fields into the next sales or operations step.
n8n	Use HTTP Request or Apify nodes, branch on failureType and retryable, keep a manual-review lane for safeToAutomate=false, and write sourceEvidence together with the business fields.
Google Sheets	Export the Dataset directly or append rows from an automation. Keep stable entityId as a hidden key so reruns update the correct record instead of creating ambiguous duplicates.
Airtable	Map entityId to a primary or deduplication field, store confidence and evidence in separate columns, and expose recommendedAction as the triage view.
Webhook	Configure an Apify webhook for terminal run states, retrieve the Dataset after SUCCEEDED, and treat FAILED or TIMED-OUT runs as operational events rather than negative business evidence.

A safe automation shape

The Actor is a collection and decision-support component. A production workflow should keep raw evidence, decision metadata, and business action in distinct layers:

1. Collect: run the Actor with explicit bounded input.
2. Validate: require a successful run and schema-valid Dataset rows.
3. Triage: branch on failureType, retryable, confidenceBand, and safeToAutomate.
4. Review: open source evidence for rows that may affect a person, campaign, investment, compliance decision, or customer record.
5. Act: execute only the action approved by your own policy and authorized operator.
6. Audit: retain run ID, Dataset ID, observation time, input reference, source evidence, and the final human decision.

This separation prevents a common automation error: turning “data was observed” into “a business action is justified.”

Operating guide

Before the first production run

1. Write the business question in one sentence: Which public contact channel is actually evidenced on the submitted company website, and what must still be verified before outreach?
2. Confirm every submitted input is within your authorized scope.
3. Use the prefilled small example and review all returned row types.
4. Map stable identifiers, confidence, evidence, actions, gaps, failure, and retry fields into the destination.
5. Establish a human owner for review exceptions.
6. Set a run budget and output bound appropriate to the test.
7. Verify that secrets are stored only in the platform or workflow secret manager.

After every scheduled run

1. Check terminal run status and logs.
2. Compare the number of submitted entities, produced business rows, and advisory rows.
3. Review partial, unknown, conflict, and low-confidence buckets.
4. Inspect a sample of source evidence, including at least one positive and one negative result.
5. Confirm the destination deduplicated on the intended stable key.
6. Verify that no downstream action was triggered from an error row.
7. Track cost per useful reviewed row rather than cost per raw request alone.

Production monitoring signals

Monitor source-unavailable rate, partial-row rate, low-confidence share, missing evidence, retry volume, run duration, Dataset row count, and spend. A sudden shift may indicate source drift, input drift, or an upstream outage. Stop automation and investigate before accepting a new pattern as business truth.

Cost control

Use two or three representative domains first. Inspect company-domain classification, source URLs, and partial flags before increasing the batch. Current event prices are always shown in the live Apify pricing panel.

Use maxTotalChargeUsd when calling a monetized Actor if your workflow supports it. Treat a buyer-set cap as a hard safety boundary. If the cap stops work, the unfinished items remain unprocessed; they do not become negative results.

Review templates and quality reporting

Row-review worksheet

For every material row, an analyst should be able to answer the following without relying on memory or an unstated assumption:

1. What submitted entity or query does this row refer to?
2. Is it a business result, a baseline/advisory row, a partial observation, or a failure?
3. Which exact source evidence supports the headline fact?
4. When was the evidence observed, and is there a different source publication time?
5. Which fields are direct observations, which are normalized, and which are deterministic derivations?
6. What important evidence is null, missing, partial, ambiguous, or conflicting?
7. Does confidence describe evidence support only, or has someone incorrectly treated it as business value?
8. What recommended action is present, and what additional verification does its reason require?
9. Is the narrow action marked safe to automate? If yes, does organizational policy also permit it?
10. What final human disposition was made, by whom, and from which run and Dataset item?

Field-group review prompts

1. entityId, domain, inputRef, observedAt

Contract meaning: Stable domain identity, normalized target, original input reference, and collection time.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

2. emails, personalEmails, genericEmails

Contract meaning: Company-domain email observations and heuristic local-part categories. Personal-style does not mean a verified person.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

3. emailSources, sourcePages, sourceEvidence

Contract meaning: The page-level provenance required to inspect where a value came from.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

4. thirdPartyEmails

Contract meaning: Addresses observed on the page whose domain does not support a company-owned classification.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

5. phones, socials, bestContact

Contract meaning: Other public channels and a deterministic review preference, not a consent or reply-likelihood claim.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

6. contactabilityScore, contactabilityBand

Contract meaning: Observed channel richness, kept separate from evidence confidence.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

7. confidenceScore, confidenceBand, confidenceRisks

Contract meaning: Confidence that the bounded static-HTML check supports its factual classification.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

8. partial, robotsDisallowed, failureType, retryable

Contract meaning: Explicit operational gaps and whether a later retry may produce a more complete result.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

9. recommendedAction, actionPriority, safeToAutomate

Contract meaning: Review routing. Outreach is never automatically authorized by this Actor.

Reviewer prompts: Is the value present? Does its type match the schema? Is it supported by sourceEvidence or a documented deterministic transformation? Is any null being silently converted into a default? Would the value still mean the same thing after CSV export? Does the destination preserve the related confidence and gap fields?

Weekly quality report

Create a recurring internal report with these measures. The report is about pipeline health, not market demand unless the source contract explicitly measures demand.

Metric	Why it matters	Investigate when
Submitted inputs	Defines the actual denominator and scope of the run.	The count differs from the approved batch or schedule.
Business result rows	Shows how many usable observations were produced.	The rate changes sharply without an input explanation.
Advisory/failure rows	Prevents operational failures from disappearing in a results-only dashboard.	Any terminal class grows or is unmapped.
Partial-result rate	Measures incomplete source coverage or configured truncation.	It rises, or analysts stop seeing the partial warning.
Low-confidence rate	Shows the share of rows requiring more evidence.	It rises by source, cohort, or input pattern.
Retryable failure rate	Distinguishes temporary operational issues from deterministic outcomes.	Retries repeat without improving evidence.
Evidence-link coverage	Confirms material facts remain traceable after export.	Links or evidence objects are missing from delivered records.
Safe-automation share	Shows how little or much of the workflow can be deterministic.	A mapping change makes unsafe actions appear safe.
Manual-review backlog	Measures whether human verification capacity matches collection volume.	Rows age beyond the campaign or decision window.
Duplicate destination writes	Tests idempotency and stable identity mapping.	The same entity/run creates multiple external actions.
Cost per reviewed useful row	Relates platform spend to approved, decision-useful output.	Raw volume rises but reviewed utility falls.
Source-drift exceptions	Detects changed markup, response shape, policy, or source availability.	A new unknown pattern survives more than one bounded check.

Client-facing delivery note template

Use a note like this when delivering exports to a client or another team:

This Dataset contains bounded public-source observations produced by the Apify Actor for the submitted Input. Each row includes observation time, evidence confidence, recommended review action, and explicit gaps where available. A positive row is not proof of buyer intent, permission, legal status, future outcome, or any fact listed in the Actor's “never claims” section. Partial and failure rows are included so coverage is not overstated. Validate material rows at their source before acting.

Add the Actor URL, run URL, Dataset URL, build/version, exact Input scope, observation window, pricing model observed for the run, reviewer name, and date of approval.

CRM disposition vocabulary

Keep collection results and sales dispositions separate. A practical downstream vocabulary is:

• needs_evidence_review: useful signal exists but a reviewer has not approved it.
• needs_identity_review: entity or ownership association is not sufficiently proven.
• needs_policy_review: contact, privacy, suppression, legal, or contractual policy must be checked.
• approved_for_research: an analyst may perform more research; this is not approval for outreach.
• approved_for_authorized_action: a named operator approved one specific action under the organization's policy.
• retry_operational_failure: the source or infrastructure failed and a bounded retry is appropriate.
• closed_no_supported_signal: the completed bounded check found no supported signal; this is not a universal negative fact.
• closed_out_of_scope: the input should not have entered this workflow.

Never overwrite recommendedAction with the CRM disposition. The first is Actor-produced decision support; the second is your organization's accountable decision.

Sampling plan

For a new workflow, review every row in the first small run. When the contract is understood, sample all failure and partial rows plus a representative set of high-, medium-, and low-confidence results. Re-expand to full review whenever the source changes, the schema version changes, a new input cohort is introduced, the error distribution shifts, or a downstream user reports an unexplained result.

Change-management record

When you change field mappings or automation policy, record:

1. Previous mapping or rule.
2. New mapping or rule.
3. Actor build/version and schemaVersion used for validation.
4. Test run and Dataset URLs.
5. Positive, negative, partial, retry, and budget fixtures inspected.
6. Security and privacy review outcome.
7. Approver and activation time.
8. Rollback condition and responsible operator.

This makes a commercial data workflow supportable. Without the record, a later operator cannot distinguish a real source change from an undocumented mapping change.

Delivery patterns for marketing and small-business teams

One-off research

Run the Actor in Console, inspect the overview table, open evidence for each material row, and export only the approved subset. Record the run URL in the client or campaign notes.

Recurring watch or hygiene job

Use an Apify schedule. Write rows into a staging table keyed by entityId. Compare current and previous observations only when the Actor supplies valid state or your own pipeline implements an explicit comparable baseline. Never infer a change from a failed run.

Agency client delivery

Deliver three views: business results, evidence/quality exceptions, and operational failures. Include the run URL, observation time, configured scope, and a plain-language statement of what the Actor does not prove. This makes the deliverable auditable and reduces disputes caused by overclaiming.

CRM enrichment

Write into staging fields first. A human or approved policy promotes values into canonical CRM fields. Keep raw source values separate from normalized and decision fields, and do not replace a verified value with a lower-confidence observation.

AI-assisted review

An LLM can summarize rows, but it must receive the evidence, confidence risks, negative signals, and limitations. Require citations to sourceEvidence and prohibit invented identity, intent, legal, funding, mailbox, valuation, or availability facts.

Buyer and operator acceptance checklist

Use this checklist before calling the workflow production-ready.

Product fit

• The business question matches: Which public contact channel is actually evidenced on the submitted company website, and what must still be verified before outreach?
• The submitted entities were selected through an authorized process.
• A human owner understands the positive, negative, partial, and failure row types.
• The team accepts the boundaries listed in “What this Actor never claims.”
• The destination keeps evidence confidence separate from business scoring.

Input and run controls

• domains is explicitly reviewed and bounded.
• checkPages is explicitly reviewed and bounded.
• maxPagesPerDomain is explicitly reviewed and bounded.
• maxConcurrency is explicitly reviewed and bounded.
• The first production-like run uses a small representative sample.
• A maximum charge or internal spend alert is configured where appropriate.
• The workflow records Actor ID, build/version, run ID, Dataset ID, and input hash.

Data handling

• entityId is mapped to an idempotent destination key.
• observedAt and source-specific time fields remain distinct.
• sourceEvidence, gaps, and nulls are preserved.
• Advisory and failure rows cannot enter the positive-results lane.
• Low-confidence and partial rows have a visible manual-review view.
• Retention and deletion rules match the type of data collected.

Action safety

• recommendedAction is treated as a review label.
• safeToAutomate=false blocks automatic external action.
• Consent, suppression, legal, contractual, and platform rules are evaluated downstream.
• A reviewer can trace a material action back to source evidence and run metadata.
• Retry logic cannot duplicate a downstream action.

Ongoing quality

• The team monitors failure, retry, partial, low-confidence, and empty-result rates.
• A source-drift threshold pauses the workflow for inspection.
• Sample evidence is manually reviewed on a recurring basis.
• Cost per useful reviewed row is measured.
• Documentation and field mappings are updated when schemaVersion changes.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a database?

No. It is an on-demand observation tool. Each run collects or evaluates the submitted scope and records evidence at that time.

Does a found row prove commercial interest?

No. A found row proves only the factual observation described by its fields. Buyer intent is never inferred.

Can I automatically contact every result?

No. Use recommendedAction as triage, verify the evidence and identity, and apply your own consent, privacy, suppression, and outreach rules.

Why is safeToAutomate often false?

Because a useful observation can still require identity, context, legal, or source verification before action. Conservative routing prevents false certainty from scaling.

What should I do with low confidence?

Open confidenceRisks and sourceEvidence, close the important gap, or keep the row in a manual queue. Do not hide the confidence field.

What does partial mean?

The Actor obtained some usable evidence but could not support a complete observation of the configured scope. Partial is not the same as empty.

What is a confirmed zero?

Only an explicit source or deterministic rule can support a confirmed absence. An outage, truncation, or unreadable response is not a zero.

Should I retry every failure?

No. Retry only when retryable is true. Invalid input, policy refusal, or deterministic classification should be corrected or handled, not looped.

Can I delete failure rows?

You can exclude them from a business-results view, but retain them in operational logs so Dataset completeness and retry decisions stay explainable.

How should I deduplicate?

Use entityId for the entity and, for stateful monitors, eventId for the observed transition. Also retain the Apify run ID.

Can I treat confidence as conversion probability?

No. Confidence measures evidence support, not purchase probability, revenue, suitability, or expected return.

Can I change the recommended action?

Yes. It is an explainable default. Your downstream policy can be stricter, and should encode organization-specific authorization and risk tolerance.

How do I estimate cost?

Run the smallest representative input, inspect live event prices and run usage in Apify, then model the number of billable result events. The live pricing panel is authoritative.

Why use a small prefill?

It produces a cheap, fast, inspectable first run and reduces the chance of scaling a wrong input or workflow assumption.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use an Apify schedule, but make the destination idempotent and review changes in failure, partial, and confidence rates.

Can I export CSV or Excel?

Yes. Apify Datasets support common export formats. JSON is recommended when you need nested evidence and decision fields.

Can I send results to Sheets or Airtable?

Yes. Preserve entityId, confidence, evidence, gaps, actions, and failure fields instead of mapping only the headline value.

Can I use it from Make, Zapier, or n8n?

Yes. Start the Actor, wait for a successful terminal state, read Dataset items, then branch on decision and failure fields.

Can an LLM consume the output?

Yes, but pass the structured evidence and limitations together. Instruct the model not to invent missing facts and to cite sourceEvidence.

What happens when a source changes?

The run may become partial, unavailable, or fail validation. Monitor these rates and inspect logs before treating changed output as a real-world shift.

Does public mean unrestricted?

No. Public visibility does not remove source terms, privacy obligations, retention rules, or the need for a legitimate downstream purpose.

Is a source URL permanent?

Not necessarily. Store observation time and material facts because web content can change or disappear.

Can I rely on one row for a high-stakes decision?

No. High-stakes legal, financial, employment, compliance, safety, or personal decisions require appropriate primary evidence and qualified review.

How do I report a suspected parsing issue?

Provide the Actor run ID, a redacted input, affected field, expected source evidence, and whether the issue reproduces. Never include tokens or private data.

What does success mean?

A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.

Support information to include with an issue

Provide the public Actor name, Apify run ID, Dataset item index or stable entity ID, a redacted Input, the relevant source URL, expected behavior, observed behavior, and whether retrying produced the same result. Do not include an Apify token, API key, private customer record, or unnecessary personal data.

Final interpretation rule

A found row means at least one bounded, public channel was observed. It does not mean the channel is verified, consented, deliverable, or commercially interested.