In this article, we’ll talk about scraping data from Yelp.com. Data Excavator app is perfect for this kind of scraping. Do you want to extract thousands of organizations from Yelp, and are looking for a solution for that? Buckle up – we’re embarking on an amazing journey into the world of data!
Data Excavator is a universal data extractor. One of its modules is a data scraper from Yelp.com. And today we will talk about this module in more detail.
Yelp is one of the largest directories of organizations in the United States and Canada. You can find just about any business on it, from coffee shops and hairdressing salons to dog-friendly hotels. And of course such a wealth of great data can’t go unnoticed (by data lovers). Thus, according to various estimates, Yelp.com firmly occupies the 4-5 position in the ranking of scraping sites according to various evaluations.
Data from Yelp.com – why you may need it?
Yelp data source is great for building an initial customer base. Specifically, you can use it to gather an Excel file of potential clients. And of course, when we talk about potential clients, we are referring to the contact fields. In just a few days, you can extract from Yelp tens of thousands of contacts of potential customers, and send them your offer.
Option number 2 is to create competing Yelp products. Many of our app clients create regional (or thematic) sites for a certain direction.
For example, someone wants to make a site with information about nightclubs. And someone else is creating a social networking site for auto locksmiths. Niche products are very much in demand, and they help to gather the audience “in one place”. But, for all such projects, you need data. And Yelp scraping is great for such tasks. Instead of boringly copying page text one by one, you click a couple of buttons and you get results in a few hours. Isn’t that great?
To sum it up, we’re all here to create business and increase sales. But what can a business do without new customers, what site can work without visitors? To successfully develop and promote any project, you need data – lots and lots of data. The Yelp data scraper is the very thing that solves this problem. We’re not talking here about how great it is to use scrapers. We’re focusing on how useful and effective they can be for any business.
A client from Canada who loves Yelp
Recently, we have been working with a client who needed information for the project “Where to spend time in Canada”. He needed to extract photos and characteristics of restaurants, parks, museums, exhibitions and other entertaining places from the Yelp.ca. Manually copying by a person would take an unacceptably long amount of time, but we have developed a setup of our program for this case.
We created actual settings for Yelp scraping based on the client’s wishes. He ran Data Excavator, imported the settings file, and started data extraction. He used our application for about 2 weeks until he collected the data set he wanted. Now that data is being used on his website and his search traffic is increasing more and more. In other words – it was a successful and effective case study.
So by using our Yelp.com scraper, our client from Canada received a huge amount of information. The attendance of different places by people, their opinions about these places and detailed characteristics of the places themselves.
What data can I extract from the page?
Short answer – pretty much anything you need. In fact – our scraper is a very versatile and flexible tool, which can be customized in many ways.
Our program has a ready-made template for parsing data from the Yelp website. You don’t need to configure anything. It is enough to install the program, find the template and click “Create Project by Template”. The template includes parsing the following blocks:
- Name
- Location address
- Website
- Phone number
- Work time
- Amentities
- Specialisation
- Rate value
- Pricing policy
- Photos (in Hi-quality)
- Description text
And this is what we have at the output, after applying our application. This is the settings test page. In real mode, we’re processing dozens of pages per second.
If you are familiar with CSS selectors, you can add any other elements for extraction. We can also help you with this.
Scraping reviews – how to do it?
At the bottom of Yelp you can find the reviews section. And yes, in some cases you came here just for them! Reviews are presented on the site as a set of 20 lines, and a block with pagination. By default, the app only retrieves the first 20 reviews.
Oooh yes, the very same reviews that are so effectively indexed by Google. Fresh traffic to your site in the reviews section is just as delicious as what is written about in the reviews themselves.
When you purchase the license key, we provide full customization. With these, you can extract an unlimited number of reviews. Specifically, all reviews from each Yelp organization, starting with the first page. Our Yelp data scraper sequentially scrolls through the pagination pages, and scrapes the reviews one by one.
What to pay extra attention to
Yelp changes the markup of your site very often. Oh yes, literally every month they add or remove something. This, of course, affects the scraper settings. We use CSS selectors to extract data. You can read more about them in our article. If you can reconfigure selectors yourself, great! If not, just contact our technical support and we’ll be happy to help you!
Second – in our opinion, the guys at Yelp really don’t like it when someone parses their site. Ugh, they literally create a lot of hurdles for programs like ours.
But don’t worry too much – our app handles blockers just fine. We have the ability to connect proxies, and that includes rotating proxies. In addition, Data Excavator has a built-in CAPTCHA pass-through mechanism. This kit is just what you need for effective Yelp scraping.
API and “free data”. This may sound unexpected. But yes! Yelp has APIs through which you can get organization data. But wait…. First, you have to spend a lot of time researching it. Yeah, okay. Second, the API is provided under certain conditions, including fees and restrictions, But what’s the surprise? You can retrieve no more than 3 organization reviews – those are the rules. Really? Only 3 reviews? Far, far from it for everyone.
And that’s why Yelp scrapers are so popular. Literally, choosing between a full dataset and 3-click scraping and between a week of learning the API with limitations. Which will you choose?
How do I get started with Yelp data scraper?
It’s very simple and quick. Let’s look at it step by step.
- First, you need to download and launch our app.
- After launching, go to the “Ready Templates” tab and find Yelp there.
- Click “Create Project” – you will see a window with the settings
- Save the project, and run it.
- Wait a little while, and enjoy the results!
Our app will automatically bypass all the links you offer it. You can retrieve entire categories, organizations from different cities and regions, and more from Yelp.
To fine-tune your targeting, use the Respected URLs field – put comma-separated portions of URLs copied directly from the page addresses of categories or sections of Yelp.
Are you ready to try Yelp data scraper with Data Excavator?
First. download our app
Next, get demo key or make a purchase on CodeCanyon
Then, scrape Yelp just in a few clicks or contact our support!
