Outscraper Review: The Backend of Your Local Directory

Google Maps is the database of the physical world.

If you are building a directory—whether it’s for "Dentists in Chicago" or "Coffee Shops in Melbourne"—Google Maps is your primary source of truth. It has the reviews, the addresses, the photos, and the operational hours.

But Google does not want you to have that data.

If you try to copy-paste listings, you will quit after an hour. If you try to write a Python script to scrape it, Google will identify your IP address and ban you before you get past page two.

Outscraper is the workaround.

It is a specialized data extraction platform that focuses heavily on Google Maps. It handles the proxies, the browser fingerprinting, and the captchas. You simply tell it what you want, and it delivers a spreadsheet.

For directory builders, this tool is not optional. It is the fuel source. This review details how Outscraper works, why it is the standard for local data, and how to use it to populate a directory website without manual entry.

The Problem with Local Data

Building a local business directory has a "chicken and egg" problem.

Nobody visits a directory that has no listings. But businesses won’t sign up for a directory that has no traffic. You have to seed the directory first. You need 500, 1,000, or 10,000 listings to make the site look alive.

You have three options:

1. Manual Entry: You hire a VA to copy-paste data. This is slow, prone to human error, and surprisingly expensive at scale.
2. Official Google Places API: This is the "legit" way. It is also financially ruinous. Google gives you $200 in monthly credit. After that, the costs ramp up fast. For a large directory, you could burn thousands of dollars just to display basic info.
3. Scraping: You use a tool to read the public data from Google Maps and save it.

Outscraper fits into option 3. But it solves the main issue with scraping: reliability.

Most scrapers run on your computer. When you scrape Google Maps, you are sending hundreds of requests to Google's servers in seconds. Google sees this traffic coming from your home wifi. They know you are a bot. They block you.

Outscraper runs on the cloud. They manage a massive pool of rotating residential proxies. To Google, the traffic looks like thousands of different normal users browsing maps from different locations. You don't get blocked. You just get the data.

What is the Google Maps Scraper?

The core product of Outscraper is the Google Maps Scraper. It is a dashboard where you input search queries, and it outputs data files.

It allows you to extract every visible piece of data from a Google Maps listing:

• Business Name
• Full Address (Street, City, Zip)
• Phone Number
• Website URL
• Star Rating
• Number of Reviews
• Category
• Working Hours
• Latitude/Longitude
• Photos (Links)

It goes deep. It doesn't just grab the top 20 results. It can iterate through zip codes and categories to find thousands of results for a single query.

The "Enrichment" Factor: Getting Emails

This is the specific feature that matters for directory owners.

Google Maps rarely displays email addresses. It displays phone numbers and website links. If you scrape Google Maps directly, you end up with a list of businesses you can't email.

Outscraper solves this with Email & Contact Scraper Integration.

When you run a job, you can check a box that says "Extract Emails and Contacts." Here is what happens in the background:

1. Outscraper finds the business on Google Maps.
2. It grabs the website URL (e.g., www.joesplumbing.com).
3. It then sends a bot to visit www.joesplumbing.com.
4. It scans that website for email addresses, Facebook links, Instagram handles, and LinkedIn profiles.
5. It merges that data back into your main spreadsheet.

You end up with a row that has the Google Maps data plus the direct email address found on their website.

For a directory business model, this is everything. You can upload the listing to your site, then email the business owner saying: "I've added your business to our directory. Click here to claim your listing and update your profile."

Without the email extraction, you are stuck cold calling.

How It Works: A Walkthrough

The interface is utilitarian. It isn't pretty, but it works.

1. Define Categories and Locations

You don't just search "Restaurants." You can be specific. You can enter Plumbers, HVAC, and Electricians in the category box. Then, you select locations. You can type Austin, TX or you can upload a list of 500 different zip codes.

2. Set Limits

You can tell the system to stop after 100 results, or let it run until it finds everything. You can also set filters. For example, you might only want businesses with a rating above 4.0 stars, or businesses that have a website. This helps you filter out the "junk" listings before you even pay for them.

3. Configure Enrichment

This is where you select "Email & Contact Scraper." You can also choose to scrape user reviews if you want to populate your directory with existing social proof (though be careful with copyright here—usually better to just link to them).

4. Run and Download

You hit "Get Data." You don't have to keep your browser open. The job runs on their servers. You will get an email when it is done. You can download the data as CSV, Excel, JSON, or Parquet.

Data Quality and Accuracy

I have tested this extensively against manual searches.

The Good: The NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data is 100% accurate to what is currently on Google Maps. Since it pulls in real-time, you aren't getting a stale database from 2019. If a business changed their hours yesterday, Outscraper sees it today.

The Nuance: The email extraction is good, but not perfect. Since it relies on scanning the business's website, it can sometimes pick up generic emails like info@ or support@. Sometimes it grabs the email of the web developer who built the site if it's in the footer. However, it validates the emails to ensure they are formatted correctly and the domain exists.

Duplicates: One common issue with scraping Maps is duplicates. If a business lists itself under "Italian Restaurant" and "Pizza Place," it might show up twice. Outscraper has a "Drop Duplicates" checkbox. Always check this. It saves you from cleaning the spreadsheet later.

Pricing Model

Outscraper uses a Pay-As-You-Go model.

This is rare. Most SaaS tools want to lock you into a $99/month subscription where you lose your credits if you don't use them.

With Outscraper, you pay for what you scrape.

• Google Maps Scraper: Approx $2.00 per 1,000 listings.
• Email Enrichment: Additional cost (usually around $0.003 per entity).

If you are building a directory for a small niche—say, "Vintage Record Stores in the UK"—you might only need 500 listings. That will cost you about $1. You can load $10 onto your account and it might last you a year.

If you are building a massive national directory with 500,000 listings, the volume discounts kick in, dropping the price significantly.

There is a Free Tier that gives you a small monthly allowance. It’s enough to test the format and see if the data integrates with your directory software.

Integrations and API

If you are building a serious directory, you eventually want to automate the updates. You don't want to manually upload CSVs every month.

Outscraper has a robust API.

You can set up a cron job on your server that calls the Outscraper API once a week to check for new businesses in your target area. When new data comes in, you can push it directly to your directory's database via a webhook or Zapier integration.

This allows you to have a "self-updating" directory.

Unique Specs vs. The Competition

How does this compare to other options?

vs. Instant Data Scraper (Browser Extension) Instant Data Scraper is free. It works in your browser. It is fine for scraping 50 items. But if you try to scrape 1,000 items, Google will CAPTCHA you. You also cannot schedule it, and it can't enrich the data with emails. Outscraper is for volume; extensions are for hobbyists.

vs. Apify Apify is a developer platform. It is powerful but complex. You have to manage "Actors" and memory limits. Outscraper is more "consumer" friendly. You don't need to know Node.js to use Outscraper. You just fill out a form.

vs. BrightData / Oxylabs These are enterprise proxy networks. They sell you the IP addresses, but you still have to write the scraping code yourself. Outscraper handles both the proxy and the code.

Use Case: The "Claim Listing" Directory Strategy

Here is the specific playbook for using Outscraper to build a revenue-generating directory.

1. Identify a Niche: e.g., "Wedding Venues in Colorado."
2. Scrape the Data: Use Outscraper to pull every listing for "Wedding Venue" in Colorado zip codes. Ensure you check "Email Enrichment."
3. Filter: Remove any venue with less than a 4.0 rating (you want a high-quality directory).
4. Upload: Import the CSV into your directory theme (WordPress, Brilliant Directories, eDirectory, etc.).
5. Status: Unclaimed: specific the listings as "Unclaimed."
6. Outreach: Use the email addresses found by Outscraper. Send a campaign:

• "Hi [Business Name], I noticed you are listed as a top venue in Colorado on [https://www.google.com/search?q=MyDirectory.com]. You have 4.5 stars. I wanted to verify your details are correct. You can claim the listing for free here."

7. Upsell: Once they claim the listing, offer a "Premium" upgrade that lets them add videos, coupons, or remove ads.

Outscraper provides the raw material (the data and the contact info) that makes this flywheel spin.

Warnings and Limitations

Rate Limiting on Your End Outscraper is fast. It can deliver 10,000 records quickly. If you try to import 10,000 records into a cheap WordPress hosting plan all at once, you will crash your site. Break your imports into chunks.

Google's Categories Google's categories are sometimes weird. You might search for "Gyms" and get a "Vitamin Shop" because they categorized themselves poorly. You always need to manually review the data (or spot check it) before publishing. Do not blind-upload data to a live site.

The "No Email" Scenario Not every business has a website. Not every website has an email. You will likely get a 60-70% hit rate on emails. For the rest, you only have phone numbers. You need a strategy for those (or you just accept that some listings will be harder to contact).

Common Questions

Is this legal? This is the big question. Outscraper scrapes publicly available data. It does not hack servers. It reads what any human can read on the screen. Generally, scraping public data is considered legal in many jurisdictions (US courts have ruled favorably on scraping public data). However, using that data (specifically spamming emails) falls under different laws like CAN-SPAM or GDPR. Advice: Use the data to build the directory. Be careful how you use the emails. Ensure you have an opt-out.

Can I scrape images? Yes, but Outscraper provides the link to the image hosted on Google. They do not download the image file for you (which saves bandwidth). You should be careful about copyright when displaying Google's images on your own site. It is often better to use the Google Places API for the actual image display to stay within Terms of Service, or ask business owners to upload their own photos when they claim the listing.

Does it work for other countries? Yes. It works globally. If Google Maps works there, Outscraper works there.

Calls to Action

If you are stuck staring at a blank Excel sheet, stop. You are wasting your time. Check out Outscraper and run a free test scrape for your local area.

Don't guess what the data looks like. Go to the site, sign up for the free tier, and download a sample CSV. Visit Outscraper.com to see the current pricing and parameters.

Verdict

Outscraper is a sharp tool. It does one thing—extracting data from public sources—and it does it with high reliability.

For directory builders, it is the difference between a project that takes six months and a project that takes one weekend. It converts the chaos of the web into structured rows and columns.

The pay-as-you-go pricing makes it accessible for bootstrapped founders, while the API scales for enterprise aggregators.

If you need local business data, this is how you get it.