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Ask HN: How do I get a database of businesses for my niche online directory?

4 points by hisyam ↗ HN
A few months ago I worked on a niche online directory and I just finished coding it. However, launching a directory without any businesses listed isn't very useful. Does anybody know where can I get or purchase a database of companies info like emails or telephone?

Also, could you recommend a CRM that tracks the emails that you've sent?

9 comments

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aioprisan
Apple Maps uses Acxiom, Factual, Localeze, and TomTom for small business listing. They have APIs and you can start querying their resources to build a database out for your local area.
hisyam
Thanks, they look pretty good.
orangethirty
Go offline, meaning that you should loo into non-web resources for this data. There are a lot of viable options, though all require you to input the data by hand.
hisyam
Do you have any examples?
orangethirty
Use the phonebook, or better yet, scrape it.
codegeek
You might want to check out Google Places API ? I am not sure if your business type is supported but you can see that here:

https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/supported...

hisyam
I don't see email attribute in the Place Details https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/details
codegeek
I see that in the detailed results, it has formatted phone number.

    formatted_phone_number contains the Place's phone number in its local format. For example, the formatted_phone_number for Google's Sydney, Australia office is (02) 9374 4000.