Local businesses change faster than lists do
Big companies keep the same name, domain and office for years. Local businesses don't. Restaurants close and reopen under new names, contractors move to a new town, practices are sold to a new owner, and a one-person business switches its phone number when the old provider gets too expensive.
A list exported or bought months ago has no way of noticing any of it.
What goes stale first
Owner names go stale fastest, because the business can keep its name and number after it's sold. Then emails, which change when a business moves its website or mail provider. Phone numbers and addresses last longer but still drift, and closed businesses stay on a stored list long after Google Maps has marked them closed.
How to spot an old list
Check a sample of twenty rows before you use any list. Look up each business on Google Maps: is it still open, at the same address, with the same phone? Open the website: does it still exist, and does it name the same owner? If more than a couple fail, the list is old, whatever its date says.
Working from today's data
The fix is to search when you need the list, not before. Google Maps reflects closures, moves and new businesses quickly because owners and customers keep listings up to date, and a business's own website is the best record of who runs it now.
loclay doesn't keep a stored database of businesses. Every search runs live on Google Maps when you start it, and its AI reads each business's website at that moment, so the owner, emails and phones are what the business publishes today. Most searches finish within a few minutes.