Apify Verified Email Finder

Verified Email Finder

Return a list of verified business emails by routing the user's input to the right Apify Actor and turning on the leads enrichment + email verification add-ons in a single run. No third-party verifier (Hunter, NeverBounce, Apollo) needed — verification happens inside the same Actor run.

Prerequisites

(No need to check it upfront)

The skill supports two execution paths. Pick the one that matches your environment — Steps 4 and 5 show commands for both.

MCP path (default in Claude sessions, recommended). If the Apify MCP server is connected, no setup is needed — auth runs through the user's Apify account. Use the call-actor and get-dataset-items MCP tools.

Script path (CLI / scheduled / non-Claude execution). Requires:

• .env file with APIFY_TOKEN
• Node.js 20.6+ (for native --env-file support)

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

Task Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Collect the six required anchor inputs
- [ ] Step 2: Route to the correct Actor (confirm if ambiguous)
- [ ] Step 3: Build the Actor input (verification always ON)
- [ ] Step 4: Run the Actor and wait
- [ ] Step 5: Apply the result-scope filter, deduplicate, and render

Step 1: Collect the Six Required Anchor Inputs

Ask all six as one block before any Actor call. Don't bundle Actor-specific optional fields (country code, language, max pages) into this round — surface those as follow-ups.

1. What do you have to start with? — location query / SERP keyword / URL list. This drives the routing decision.
2. The actual input — the location string, the keyword(s), or the URLs themselves.
3. Department filter — one or more of: c_suite, product, engineering_technical, design, education, finance, human_resources, information_technology, legal, marketing, medical_health, operations, sales, consulting. Default is any (leave the array empty), but ask every time.
4. Max contacts per domain / business — passed as maximumLeadsEnrichmentRecords. Default 3, but ask every time.
5. Output format — CSV or JSON. Ask every time.
6. Result scope — which leads to keep in the deliverable. The Actor always runs the same way (verification always on); this only controls post-run filtering. Pick one:

• verified-only (default) — only leads with emailVerification.result == "ok". Safest for cold email.
• verified-plus-catchall — ok plus catch_all. Catch-all is often deliverable but unprovable.
• all-emails — any lead with a non-empty email, regardless of verification.
• with-phone — any lead with a non-empty phone number, regardless of email status. Use for call campaigns.
• everything — every lead the Actor returned, even incomplete ones.

Step 2: Route to the Correct Actor

Inspect anchor #1 and pick the Actor.

| User has to start with | Actor ID | Use when | |---|---|---| | Location + business type ("dentists in Berlin") | compass/crawler-google-places | Local leads list from Maps listings; best when user wants address / phone / hours too | | Keyword / search query ("best CRM software") | apify/google-search-scraper | Contacts from whichever sites Google ranks for a topic | | Pre-existing URL list (pasted, file path) | vdrmota/contact-info-scraper | User already has domains; cheapest route since no discovery step |

All three Actors share the same three add-on fields, so verification behavior is identical across routes.

Decision examples

| User says | Route | |---|---| | "Dentists in Munich" / "Lawyers in Prague" | Maps | | "Marketing contacts at the top results for 'AI agent builder'" | Search | | "Find emails for these 5 URLs: acme-co.example, demo-co.example..." | URL list | | "Find HR contacts at Fortune 500 companies" | Ask: SERP for "Fortune 500 HR" or a URL list? | | "Find contacts at SaaS companies in Berlin" | Ask: Maps for "SaaS companies in Berlin" or SERP for "SaaS companies Berlin"? Maps works best when businesses are Google-Maps-listed. | | (User pastes both a SERP keyword AND a URL list) | Ask: run one route, the other, or both as separate deliverables? |

Ambiguity rule: if anchor #1 is unclear, ask one follow-up before running. Never burn Actor compute on a guessed route.

Mixed deliverables: if the user explicitly asks for two routes in one deliverable, run both Actors and concatenate. The Source column makes the mix clear; dedupe by email across the combined output.

Step 3: Build the Actor Input

Always set these three fields, regardless of which Actor is selected.

| Field | Value | |---|---| | maximumLeadsEnrichmentRecords | anchor #4 (default 3, min 1) | | leadsEnrichmentDepartments | anchor #3 as array, or [] if "any" | | verifyLeadsEnrichmentEmails | true (always) — guard rail, never set to false |

Full per-Actor input parameters and example payloads are in [reference/apify-actor-usage.md](reference/apify-actor-usage.md).

URL-list pre-validation: before submitting URLs to vdrmota/contact-info-scraper, parse each one and check it is http/https and parseable. Skipped entries must appear in the output as skipped — invalid URL, never silently dropped.

Step 4: Run the Actor

Maps and SERP runs with leads enrichment can take several minutes per query. Raise the timeout for large jobs.

MCP path (default in Claude sessions):

Call the call-actor tool:

• actor: one of the three Actor IDs (compass/crawler-google-places, apify/google-search-scraper, vdrmota/contact-info-scraper)
• input: the JSON payload from Step 3
• callOptions: {"timeout": 1800, "memory": 4096} for a generous budget

The tool returns runId and datasetId. If status is still RUNNING, poll with get-actor-run (waitSecs up to 45) until SUCCEEDED. Capture both IDs for the run_metadata.json sidecar.

Script path (CLI / scheduled use):

node --env-file=.env ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/reference/scripts/run_actor.js \
  --actor "ACTOR_ID" \
  --input 'JSON_INPUT' \
  --output YYYY-MM-DD_verified-emails.csv \
  --format csv \
  --timeout 900

Use --format json for JSON. The script writes the raw dataset to disk; Step 5 still applies the spurious-match + scope filters on top.

Step 5: Filter, Deduplicate, and Render

Pull the dataset:

• MCP path: call get-dataset-items with the datasetId from Step 4. Use the fields parameter (e.g., title,searchString,countryCode,city,address,phone,website,leadsEnrichment) and clean: true to keep the response small. For datasets that still exceed the response cap, fetch directly via curl https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets//items?fields=...&clean=true and pipe through jq.
• Script path: the raw dataset is already on disk in the file from Step 4.

Each record contains business fields plus a leadsEnrichment array (Maps, SERP) or top-level lead fields (URL list). Each lead has a departments array, a companyWebsite, and an emailVerification object with result (ok / invalid / disposable / catch_all / unknown / error) and quality (good / risky / bad).

• Spurious-match filter (mandatory, always on). Apply this first, before any other filter. The lead-enrichment service can return global-fallback leads when no local match exists (real case observed: a single US-zoo CFO whose companyWebsite=zoo.org was attributed to 8 unrelated Polish zoos because the matcher latched onto the zoo substring). Drop any lead whose companyWebsite hostname doesn't equal the source URL's hostname (strip https?://, leading www., anything after /; lowercase). Count drops in run_metadata.json and call them out in the deliverable header if non-zero.

• Filter by result scope (anchor #6). Applied second.

| Scope | Row-keep logic | |---|---| | verified-only | emailVerification.result == "ok" | | verified-plus-catchall | emailVerification.result in {"ok", "catch_all"} | | all-emails | email is non-empty (any result, including missing verification) | | with-phone | phone (or company phone) is non-empty (regardless of email) | | everything | keep every lead, no filter |

• Dedupe: group by lowercased email; keep the first occurrence and merge Source Query or URL if the same email appears from multiple sources. For with-phone rows that have no email, dedupe by lowercased phone instead.
• Empty-result surfacing: if the department filter (anchor #3) produces zero leads for a given domain, include a row for that domain with Email = "" and Email Verification Status = "no leads matched filter". Do not silently drop it. This is separate from the result-scope filter above — empty-domain rows are inserted before scope-filtering and always shown.

Output row schema (16 columns, including Departments) and per-format rendering details are in [reference/output-formats.md](reference/output-formats.md).

Worked Examples

• Maps: [examples/example-maps-input.md](examples/example-maps-input.md)
• SERP: [examples/example-search-input.md](examples/example-search-input.md)
• URL list: [examples/example-url-list-input.md](examples/example-url-list-input.md)

Quality Rules (always enforce)

• Guard rail: never submit a run with verifyLeadsEnrichmentEmails: false.
• Provenance & traceability: populate the Source column on every row; carry Apify runId + datasetId in run_metadata.json.
• No fabrication: missing dataset fields stay blank.
• Deliverable header transparency: state the active result scope and the spurious-match drop count; offer to re-render under a different scope.
• Ambiguity confirm: if anchor #1 is unclear, ask before running.

Cost & Pricing

Email verification is charged only for decisive results (ok / invalid / disposable); catch_all / unknown / error are free. Leads enrichment is charged per successfully extracted lead. Check the Apify console for live rates (they vary by subscription tier and change over time).

Error Handling

See [reference/troubleshooting.md](reference/troubleshooting.md).

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: apify
• Source: apify/awesome-skills
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.