ImportYeti US Trade & Supplier Data Scraper

Scrape ImportYeti — a public search index built on US customs bill-of-lading records. Search US importers by company name or product keyword, or search global suppliers by company name, and get each company's country, address, lifetime shipment count, most recent shipment date, alternate name and address counts, registered trademarks, and its ImportYeti profile URL. HTTP-only via ImportYeti's public search endpoint. No auth required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: searchImporters (US buyers) and searchSuppliers (overseas sellers)
• Product or company search: the same query field matches company names and product keywords
• Paginated sweep: walks result pages until maxItems is reached or results run out
• Proxy rotation: ImportYeti caps anonymous use per IP, so the actor rotates Apify Proxy IPs and resumes automatically when it hits the cap
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per company

• companyName — company as listed on ImportYeti
• type — record type reported upstream (importer / supplier)
• country — ISO country code
• address — primary registered address
• totalShipments — lifetime shipment records attributed to the company
• mostRecentShipment — date of the latest shipment on file
• otherAddressesCount — additional known addresses for the same company
• otherNamesCount — additional known trading names
• trademarks — registered trademarks linked to the company (capped at 20)
• companyUrl — ImportYeti profile page
• scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	searchImporters	searchImporters / searchSuppliers
query	string	electronics	Company name or product keyword
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap (1–500)
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy settings — strongly recommended, see FAQ

Example: US importers of a product

{
  "mode": "searchImporters",
  "query": "electronics",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Example: a specific buyer's import footprint

{
  "mode": "searchImporters",
  "query": "Home Depot",
  "maxItems": 25,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Example: global suppliers by name

{
  "mode": "searchSuppliers",
  "query": "Foshan furniture",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Example: wide sweep for lead generation

{
  "mode": "searchImporters",
  "query": "lithium battery",
  "maxItems": 500,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Use cases

• Sourcing teams — find overseas suppliers that already ship the product category you buy
• B2B lead generation — build lists of US importers active in a given product niche
• Competitive intelligence — see how many shipments a competitor receives and how recently
• Supply-chain risk — map which countries a company's inbound freight originates from
• Trade finance & credit — use shipment volume and recency as an activity signal on a counterparty
• Brand protection — spot importers bringing in goods under trademarks linked to your brand

FAQ

Where does this data come from? US Customs bill-of-lading filings, which are public records for ocean freight entering the United States. ImportYeti indexes and publishes them.

Is this affiliated with ImportYeti? No. This is a third-party actor that queries their public search endpoint.

Do I need an ImportYeti account? No. The search results this actor returns are the ones ImportYeti serves publicly.

Why should I enable proxy? ImportYeti limits anonymous searching to roughly 25 requests per IP address before asking for a login. On Apify cloud many actors share exit IPs, so without a proxy a run can be cut short. With {"useApifyProxy": true} the actor rotates through IPs and picks up where it left off. The free Apify Proxy AUTO group is sufficient — no residential proxy needed.

What happens if the limit is hit anyway? The run ends with a status message explaining the cap rather than failing, and any records already collected stay in the dataset.

Does this cover air freight or exports? No. Bill-of-lading data is ocean freight into the US, so air cargo and US exports are out of scope.

Why do some companies show a huge otherNamesCount? Large importers file under many trading names and subsidiaries. The count tells you how many aliases ImportYeti has consolidated under that profile.

How current are the shipment dates? Customs data is published with a lag of a few weeks, so mostRecentShipment typically trails today's date even for very active importers.

Why are trademarks capped at 20? Big brand owners hold hundreds. The first 20 keep records readable; the full list is on the linked companyUrl profile.