How do I clean stale listings from my business directory?

The problem

Directories degrade over time as businesses close. Listed business domains go dead, get parked, or lose their email infrastructure. Manual review of thousands of listings is expensive and tedious. The longer you wait, the worse it gets.

Users lose trust in a directory full of dead links. A marketplace that sends people to parked pages and 404s looks abandoned itself. The quality of your directory is only as good as the freshness of the data behind it.

How Unphurl solves it

Export your directory listings as a CSV and batch check them through Unphurl with a directory quality profile. The system analyses each domain for signs of abandonment: parked pages, broken redirect chains, missing email infrastructure, expiring registrations. You get a scored list that tells you exactly which listings to remove, flag, or investigate.

Run it quarterly to keep your directory clean. Each subsequent sweep costs less as more domains land in cache.

Signals that matter for this use case

• – Parked domain means the business website is gone. Just a placeholder or ad page.
• – Chain incomplete means the domain can't resolve. The site is dead.
• – Expiring soon means the domain registration is about to lapse. Business may be closing.
• – Bad domain status (pendingDelete, serverHold) means the domain is effectively dead.
• – No MX record means the domain can't receive email. No functioning business behind it.
• – HTTP only / SSL invalid signals an abandoned or unmaintained website.

Suggested scoring profile

{
  "name": "directory-quality",
  "weights": {
    "parked": 35,
    "chain_incomplete": 25,
    "expiring_soon": 15,
    "domain_status_bad": 15,
    "no_mx_record": 10,
    "http_only": 15,
    "ssl_invalid": 15,
    "redirects_5": 10,
    "brand_impersonation": 0
  }
}

What a result looks like

Quarterly sweep of 8,000 business listings:

600 stale listings identified and ready for removal. Your directory stays trustworthy, and users stop landing on dead pages.

Cost

A quarterly batch of 5,000 to 20,000 domains. 90-95% resolve free from the Tranco Top 100K and cache. The Pro package ($99 for 2,000 pipeline checks) handles a full directory sweep. Repeat sweeps cost less as the cache grows.

Get started

For developers: Export your directory listings and batch check via CLI.

# Export directory URLs as CSV, then:
unphurl --batch directory-listings.csv --profile directory-quality

# Get flagged listings for removal
unphurl --batch directory-listings.csv --profile directory-quality --json | \
  jq -r '.results[] | select(.result.score >= 30) | .url' > flagged.txt

For non-coders (Claude Cowork, OpenClaw, or any AI agent): Give your AI your exported CSV and ask: "Check all these business listing URLs. Give me a list of the dead ones (parked, no MX, chain incomplete) so I can remove them from the directory."