Among the most scraped websites in 2021, ProxyCrawl’s users ranked Yelp fourth, among the top four most scraped. Most of them attempt to collect local business information such as the business name, phone number, address, and hours. In addition, they collect reviews from customers.
You can use Yelp as a local business aggregator and customer review platform to:
- Create a list of local business leads for various industries
- Learn what your competitors are doing and what they are offering
- Invest time in researching a particular industry
Whatever Yelp data you desire is available for web scraping as long as it can be seen on the website. Let’s cut to the chase, how do we scrape Yelp data?
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Web Scraping and ProxyCrawl
Web scraping allows you to easily extract any content on a webpage into a spreadsheet or API. This allows you to quickly generate an extensive list of high-quality leads.
Find out what web scraping is and what it’s used for by reading our guide on web scraping.
We’ll use ProxyCrawl, a free and powerful web scraper with a suite of incredibly useful features, to scrape Yelp data quickly. You can download the library for free if you don’t already have it.
Taking Advantage Of Yelp Data
It is my pleasure to introduce you to ProxyCrawl, the web scraping tool designed specifically for people tired of building everything from scratch, from scratch, from scratch. Here is a tutorial showing how to get your own Yelp data scraper (maybe your first web scraper) in just 5 minutes using Python.
We will assume for the purposes of this example that we are a distributor of disposable coffee cups in New York. Due to this, we are interested in compiling a list of coffee shops in New York with their phone number, address, and other pertinent details.
How to Get Started
- To begin, we find the URL of Yelp’s result page for the keyword “coffee shop”.
- In the terminal, type pip install proxycrawl to install ProxyCrawl’s scraping library.
- For execution, paste the following code into the editor:
<Code>
There you have it! In just a few seconds, you’ll see the result. The data would be in JSON format, so you can use it dynamically or store it for future use.
Let’s get into the details so you know what’s happening. Let’s start by importing ProxyCrawl’s library.
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The next step is to enter the URL to scrape “coffee shops” in New York. By going to Yelp and copy-pasting the URL, you can add more details like distance and average rating.
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Once the code has been run for the first time, you will have plenty of data.
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You’ve been successful! Having filtered for what needs to be saved and used, we are now ready to go further. The following example shows how to filter by shop name, location, and number of reviews.
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How Are The Output Data Formatted?
JSON (or JavaScript Object Notation) is used for the output. Lines represent information from yelp.com related to a single (unique) page, such as the page’s address, amenities, categories, images, location, name, opening hours, phone number, rating, reviews, URL, timestamp, etc. Data can be arranged however you want and stored in databases, CSVs, etc. The following is the output of the code we ran above:
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We will now look at how we can store the same in a readable CSV (or Comma Separated Values) format. The code for that is as follows:
<Code>
Let’s conclude with this:
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A Lead Generation and Web Scraping Strategy for Yelp
By using web scraping for lead generation, your business opens up a whole new world of opportunities. We are no longer spending hours putting information together or money on lists from lead generation companies.
Lead lists of high quality are now just a click away.
This data could be used to build your next awesome project, or maybe you’ll use it to build an API.
Please let us know if you’ve built something awesome using ProxyCrawl over at our email or customer support.
Food delivery apps scraped
In recent years, food delivery services have grown rapidly (with fierce competition), especially after the 2020 pandemic. A part of people’s lifestyles had been affected by the lockdown or social distancing. Food delivery apps have also been trending lately. Once you master ProxyCrawl, which is incredibly easy to use, you will be able to scrape data from websites such as Grubhub, Doordash, and Uber Eats.
As they are not yet available in the templates, you can use the auto-detection feature to build the scraper, or build a more customized one using ProxyCrawl’s Crawler (where you can extract the exact data you want). Scraping the web is a great way to gather data from the web. Give it a try.
Challenges Associated With Web Scraping
You might face the following challenges if you build a web scraper without ProxyCrawl:
- When Yelp detects too many requests from the same IP address, it either bans or restricts that IP address to stop scraping.
- The scraping process would be more challenging if there were anti-scraping mechanisms, such as graphic images or mathematical captchas.
- Scrapers are written in accordance with the code elements of the web page at the point of setup, so frequent changes complicate the codes and may lead to data loss.
ProxyCrawl takes care of all your web scraping challenges for you. ProxyCrawl handles all challenges for you and provides you with structured data at scale.
To Sum Up
It takes a leap of faith to learn something new from scratch – to convince ourselves that it is not as difficult as we imagined. Isn’t this what life is about – trying new things and never giving up.
That’s why we have been hard at work creating a low-code web scraping tool for everyone who wants to take advantage of web data. The days of web scraping solely for programmers are long gone. We hope you enjoy it with ProxyCrawl!
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