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Yellow Pages Data

by samcarson
8 replies
I am considering buying a Yellow Pages Scraping software to populate a few pages on my site.

I am a little hesitant and not sure if this may pose any legal issues in the future with Yellow Pages.

Any of you using these scrapers? Are there any safer alternatives?

Sam
#data #pages #yellow
  • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
    This is NOT legal advice, but I do use software to gather
    pre-compiled data. If you don't copy and reuse (display)
    the data in the exact same way as the source, it seems
    that it would be nearly impossible to prove WHERE you
    got the data from as long as none of it was somehow
    proprietary.

    You basically just reusing publicly available information.

    Willie
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    • Profile picture of the author samcarson
      Thanks a lot Willie. Really honored to get a reply from you.

      I heard of this term called "seeding" where they insert some fake data so it is easy to detect if it is being used. Maybe I am just overthinking.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
      Originally Posted by Willie Crawford View Post

      This is NOT legal advice, but I do use software to gather
      pre-compiled data. If you don't copy and reuse (display)
      the data in the exact same way as the source, it seems
      that it would be nearly impossible to prove WHERE you
      got the data from as long as none of it was somehow
      proprietary.

      You basically just reusing publicly available information.

      Willie
      This was how I figured out a lot of sources for Google places information that they were scraping - I found listings with typos compared to Yahoo / Bing local and then I had a nice unique list that I could search for. I'm assuming Google has deals with some of the businesses it scrapes, but certainly not all...
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  • Profile picture of the author Gene Pimentel
    The information you scrape itself does not belong to anyone. As Willie said, it is public information from many different sources. But if the scraper is somehow tapping into THEIR database or programming, that's when it becomes iffy.
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  • Profile picture of the author samcarson
    Thanks a lot Gene.

    Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    Hi Gene,

    Is scraping of Yellow Pages considered legal - what about Google SERPS? I guess it is public information.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gene Pimentel
      Originally Posted by Steve Peters Benn View Post

      Hi Gene,

      Is scraping of Yellow Pages considered legal - what about Google SERPS? I guess it is public information.
      Steve, I don't know about what's legal and what's not, as I'm not a lawyer, but I see no difference in driving down the street and seeing "Joe's Pizza, 123 Main Street, Anytown, US" and seeing it at any other resource. It's just raw, public information. But if you're tapping into their software or database to retrieve the information, that's a whole different ball of wax.
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      • Profile picture of the author un33k
        Every site should have a robots.txt file indicating what could be scraped.
        All reputable search engines (yahoo, google, bing ...etc.) respect the directives in the robots.txt. You should too.

        Now, checkout the robots.txt on Yellow Pages and see what it says.
        Major search engines can't read terms&conditions of all websites. That is why robots.txt is placed there. They also scrape every sites they have access to.

        In you case, you direct your scraper only to one site (Yellopages.com) and hence you can read the terms & conditions.

        You can buy pre-indexed databases from other site that already have done the job for you. Not sure what happens when you buy the data! (like you buy stolen goods)

        As a web guy, I'd say, if you have to do it and if they don't stop you by blocking your IP address, just be kind and don't put too much load on their servers.

        The other thing would be:
        What if I run a business and register my business address and telephone number on Yellow Pages. Then 20 Other sites copy the data and publish it.
        What happens when my phone number changes or I move the address?
        If I could just go to Yellow Pages and change my business info, then that would be great, however I might not have access to your site and now you are showing wrong and outdate content regarding my business. Then it would not be fair to me as a business owner.

        Use your own judgment.
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