business-contact-recon

name	business-contact-recon
description	Free OSINT reconnaissance to discover, validate, and build outreach-ready contact lists for businesses by region/industry. Uses DuckDuckGo, LinkedIn (free tier), and public records only. Generates structured CSVs for manual CRM import.

Business Contact Reconnaissance Skill

When not to use this skill

• Do not use when another skill is a better direct match for the task.
• Do not use when the request is outside this skill's scope.

When to Use

Build targeted outreach lists using free public data sources:

• Sales lead generation by region/industry
• Business validation before contact attempts
• Discovering key personnel (owners, managers, decision-makers)
• Regional/niche market research

Prerequisites

# Core dependencies
pip install requests beautifulsoup4 lxml python-dateutil

# Optional (for advanced extraction)
pip install linkedin-api  # Free tier with limitations

No paid APIs required. All sources in this skill are free.

Core Workflow

Phase 1: Discovery

1. Define target parameters (region, keywords, industry)
2. Run web searches to discover businesses
3. Filter by location/relevance
4. Compile seed list

Phase 2: Validation

Cross-reference each business:

• Social presence (LinkedIn, website, social links)
• Review activity (Google, Yelp)
• Recent mentions (news, blogs)
• Government records (state biz registries)
• Forum/community signals

Phase 3: Contact Extraction

For validated businesses:

1. Scrape website contact pages (respect robots.txt)
2. Find LinkedIn company page → extract key personnel
3. Use pattern-based email guessing ([e-mail])

Phase 4: Output

Generate CSV with standardized fields.

Available Scripts

Script	Purpose
scripts/discover_businesses.py	DuckDuckGo + web discovery
scripts/validate_activity.py	Multi-signal validation
scripts/extract_contacts.py	Contact extraction from websites
scripts/linkedin_extract.py	Free LinkedIn company/person data
scripts/build_csv.py	Generate CRM-ready CSV

Free Data Sources Priority

1. Search engines: DuckDuckGo (no tracking, no API limits)
2. Business listings: Google Maps, Yelp (public pages)
3. Social: LinkedIn (public profiles only, no scraping)
4. Government: State Secretary of State business databases
5. Domains: WHOIS lookup, website analysis
6. News: RSS feeds, Google News alerts

Compliance & Safety

✅ Allowed (Free Tier)

• Public business listings and directories
• Website contact pages (respect rate limits)
• LinkedIn public profiles
• Government records (public domain)
• DuckDuckGo/Google search results

⚠️ Use Caution

• Website scraping: 1 req/sec max, respect robots.txt
• Email pattern guessing: verify before sending
• LinkedIn: no automation tools, manual data only

❌ Never Do

• Credential stuffing or account takeover
• Bypassing CAPTCHAs or rate limits
• Scraping behind login walls
• Harvesting personal phone numbers
• Using paid APIs you don't have keys for

Output Format

business_name,website,phone,email,contact_name,title,linkedin_url,source,confidence,last_verified,notes
Joe's Plumbing,https://joesplumbing.com,555-0123,[e-mail],Joe Smith,Owner,,website+hunter,high,2026-02-06,"Local SEO present"

Rate Limiting

• Search engines: 1 query per 3 seconds (DuckDuckGo is lenient)
• Websites: 1 request per second
• LinkedIn: Manual extraction only (no API/scripted access)
• General: Be respectful, don't impact target sites

Reference Documentation

• Free Data Sources - Detailed guide to all free APIs and databases
• Industry Templates - Pre-built search patterns by industry
• Compliance Guidelines - Do's and don'ts for ethical OSINT
• CSV Schema - Field definitions and validation rules