Gathering directory data?

[Ludachris]

Question - @MJ DeMarco might be a good person to chime in with his limo directory he built. If you're looking to build a directory for service providers in a given niche, where would you start for a basic starting list? Scrape an existing directory?

I have a few ideas and I'm trying to decide which one to focus on and put all of my effort into.

 

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[Scot]

I'm bumping this thread because when I was trying to build a directory this part drove me crazy.

SIC code lists. Everyone's selling them (for way too much money) but where do they get them from?

If all businesses fall into a SIC code, there's got to be some repository or database everyone's pulling them from.

What is it?


My dev recommended that we scrape google, but you'll most likely need to outsource that.

 

[Ludachris]

The more I look into it the more I think a lot of it would have to be manually built out. Still possible but makes it more difficult. And then after I built it someone could scrape my directory. Hmmm...

 

[Andy Black]

Years ago I bought a tool called Yellabot. It would scrape the yellow pages.

You can buy lists of businesses in specific verticals too. 118 118 sells them in the UK I think.

What are you going to do with that directory of business details though?

@Scot - where was that post where I asked you to consider which side of the marketplace to start with?

 

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[Ludachris]

Years ago I bought a tool called Yellabot. It would scrape the yellow pages.

You can buy lists of businesses in specific verticals too. 118 118 sells them in the UK I think.

What are you going to do with that directory of business details though?

@Scot - where was that post where I asked you to consider which side of the marketplace to start with?

The idea would be to create a niche directory for specific services that is currently fragmented. It doesn't look like scraping YellowPages or Yelp would even make sense - and it would violate TOS anyway. Would have to be mostly manual. I'm trying to gauge the NEED for it though via keyword planner, FB groups and forum posts.

 

[Scot]

Years ago I bought a tool called Yellabot. It would scrape the yellow pages.

You can buy lists of businesses in specific verticals too. 118 118 sells them in the UK I think.

What are you going to do with that directory of business details though?

@Scot - where was that post where I asked you to consider which side of the marketplace to start with?

It's buried somewhere in my progress thread but we definitely elaborated more on this on our Skype call here Sales, Silence, and Building Marketplaces

 

[gemike]

I use OutWit Hub for this kind of extraction jobs. It is pretty straightforward to set up and use, you don't need a server and if you don't want to bother creating scrapers yourself, they can do it for you.
Data is key in a start-up so until we have an IT department, it's good to have powerful and simple tools to do the job...

 

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[Scot]

I use OutWit Hub for this kind of extraction jobs. It is pretty straightforward to set up and use, you don't need a server and if you don't want to bother creating scrapers yourself, they can do it for you.
Data is key in a start-up so until we have an IT department, it's good to have powerful and simple tools to do the job...

This is cheaper than any list I've seen. Great resource. Rep ++