Best Web Scrapers
In a hurry?
The best Yelp scraper in 2023, as found in our independent testing, is ScraperAPI!
Yelp is a website that provides a place for people to post business reviews and also indulge in some healthy social networking.
Have you recently moved into a new neighborhood?
You can trust Yelp to show you reviews on the nearest schools and restaurants.
The website is crowd-sourced with entire pages dedicated to local businesses.
When users visit Yelp, they can leave reviews regarding their experiences at the nearest beauty salons, dentists, doctors, bars, restaurants, etc.
They also get the option to rate the place on a scale of one to five stars.
In 2014, the number of businesses listed on Yelp was over 66 million and since then it has obviously gone even higher.
Such a large reviewing website must have a huge amount of data on the customers that leave behind their reviews. This data can serve as a gold mine to businesses who are trying to conduct relevant research.
Some common data that customers leave behind on Yelp include email address, phone number, latitude and longitude, price ranges, zip code, state, city, etc.
It is understandable why businesses would want an insight into all these customer behavior patterns.
They can use this data to get tons of information about buying patterns and customers’ likes and dislikes.
No matter how much businesses would like to get their hands on all this information, Yelp does not provide any means to get this data from their website.
In order to be able to get your hands on this information, you will have to devise certain methods to do so.
The thing that might prove to be in your best interest as a researcher or a business looking for customer data, Yelp is not completely inaccessible for scraping.
You can use third-party automated scraping tools to scrape Yelp reviews for the data that you want.
With the help of these scraping tools, you will be able to successfully scrape Yelp for any information that is available publicly.
Yelp scrapers can help you with all the data that you need. This article will guide you on the best Yelp scrapers that are available online and what they can do for you.
Best Yelp Scrapers 2023
If you are someone who is not that tech savvy and are not well-versed with coding then it is better that you make use of one of the many top Yelp scrapers.
This option is also great for those who do not want to get involved in the IP blocking and Captcha Solver part of the process.
Those steps can only be done by people who are IT geeks. Someone who is accustomed to the programming language world.
There is a whole list of options when it comes to Yelp scrapers. We will use this article to make a recommendation for a few of them so that it can make your life easier.
It is quite easy to get the hang of them so you will be happily scraping away in no time. Here is our list of great Yelp scrapers that will get you all the data that you need:
- ScraperAPI – 🏆 Winner!
- Apify
- Bright Data
- WebHarvy
- Yelp Data Scraper
1. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is well-known for its versatility in the Yelp scraping market.
It provides complete support for desktops due to which it has gained a lot of popularity and it also includes a cloud-based option.
It provides templates for data scraping on sites such as Yelp which streamline the whole process and make it a lot easier.
Along with this ScraperAPI does not require any training for recognising the required data.
It does so itself with the help of an Al-based process for identification of data. It allows you to export data using multiple different paths.
The starter plan or the trial version for this software is free but after that you have to pay $49.99 each month in order to be able to use ScraperAPI.
2. Apify
This software is currently leading in the scraping market. It provides a well-rounded set of web automation tools. Apify has named these tools as actors.
You can make use of these for automation tasks on e-commerce sites and social media platforms.
The Yelp scraper by Apify is one of its actors and it has reached the top of the list for scrapers due to its track record.
With the help of this scraper you can easily scrape a lot of customer data such as star ratings, business reviews and other business details.
Apify scraper for Yelp is a paid software with a free trial. It is a developer-centric option that simplifies a lot of steps that would otherwise boggle anyone’s mind.
The free trial option for Apify includes 10 units of actor computing. The pricing begins at 100 actor units for $49 per month.
3. Bright Data
Bright Data is one of the top scrapers for websites in the world. It can easily scrape public data from Yelp.
The service offers complete support for Yelp scraping.
Bright Data is flexible software, it is very user-centric. Along with this is also quite strong due to which it is able to easily scrape data off of Yelp without getting caught in any of Yelp’s defense mechanisms.
In order to be able to use the complete strength of this software, you will have to incur the required monthly expenses.
4. WebHarvy
It is a visual web scraper that can be used to scrape publicly available data from Yelp.
This data includes business reviews and a lot of other information that can prove to be useful to businesses.
It takes into account all the anti-scraping mechanisms that are available on the web and strengthens itself to avoid detection. It is built entirely for the modern web and it portrays modern characteristics as well.
Training this software is quite easy and just within a matter of minutes you can start scraping for customer details on Yelp.
It uses a system called intelligent pattern detection, which enables it to make the whole training process a lot easier for the user.
WebHarvy is available at $139 for single license. It does not give any free trials for its users. Moreover, it supports desktop format so that makes it quite user-friendly.
5. Yelp Data Scraper
This software can be purchased with a yearly payment of $59.95. The initial free trial comes with a lot of limitations but it gives the user a clear idea of what to expect and how the scraper works.
Just the name alone can tell you that this scraper means business. It is a specialized scraping tool for websites that enables you to scrape data from Yelp.
With Yelp Data Scraper you can easily scrape data from business pages on Yelp. This data includes business related information such as user reviews and ratings.
It is a lightweight, powerful and versatile software that is not difficult to use. The data that is extracted can be easily downloaded in CSV format for later viewing.
What Is Web Scraping?
When you take data off from a website for research purposes, it is already a major task.
On top of that if you land with just jumbled up raw data then that will prove to be of absolutely no use to you.
In that case it is highly important that you have a tool that not only helps you get data from a website but also sorts it into a readable format which can be used for research.
Scraping is basically when data is selected on a website and it can be copied off in the form of a spreadsheet.
Moreover a good scraping software can be trained over time to get the required and appropriate results so over time your work gets even easier.
Web scraping is not illegal in most parts of the world because technically you are only collecting the information that is readily available to the general public.
None of this is private information.
Everything you get through web scraping is basically all that information which is already publicly available.
Web scrapers vary in types and the level of automation they use and the kind of data they enable you to collect.
These softwares have replaced the human version of data collectors. They provide you with data in a structured form which is what is the need of the hour.
Businesses need relevant data for their growth and they need it right away. And they will pay good money to whoever gives it to them first.
The amazing part is how this data is used by various giant businesses to tailor make their applications and products for customers after finding out their preferences without them having to haggle their target audience for all these details.
Even though web scraping is not illegal, the way you use the data that is extracted can be termed as illegal depending upon the activity that you are using it for.
So in any case this is not something that you should dip your toes in if you do not have a strong legal time on your side.
A lot of websites list clearly in the terms and conditions that they do not allow any form of scraping and your actions are clearly in violation of that.
Adding that to an illegal activity using the data can cause issues for you.
A Beginner’s Guide To Yelp Scraping
If you are someone who wants to gather data regarding customer preferences through Yelp then you must keep in mind that it is against scraping of any kind, even with the help of a third party software.
Scraping is against the Terms of Service listed on the Yelp website.
However, it should be noted that gaining access to and collecting any publicly available data is not illegal.
It does not go against any laws, even though it is blatantly against Yelp’s Terms of Service.
Before getting onto the scraping bandwagon, it is important that you check out the local laws on this matter and also get a lawyer onboard who can guide you along the right path.
The scraped data can be used for sinister purposes too, this can turn this whole process illegal.
Yelp website has certain technological systems in place that help them in preventing data scraping.
Of course they have their own legal team as well to play the role of a deterrent. But the website itself makes use of these systems to try and protect itself from scraping.
They use Captchas and IP Block options to scare people from not attempting scraping again. Most scraping software has a bot-like behavior.
If Yelp detects any bot activity then it will launch Captchas.
If through Captchas the system ascertains that there is bot activity taking place on the website then the IP address in question will be blocked temporarily.
There are multiple methods that Yelp uses in order to stop scraping from taking place.
But unfortunately for Yelp, scraping is such a big part of business research these days that no matter what way they deploy to prevent it from happening, nothing is foolproof.
How Can You Scrap Using A Programming Language?
If you have the ability to use any programming language then you may easily use it to devise a scraper for Yelp that you can personally use.
Python is a relatively common programming language that can be used to create Yelp scrapers. It has an interesting scraping library which can make code-writing quite easy.
Requests is used to send HTTP requests. BeautifulSoup is used for extracting data and parsing the response.
Once the installation of these two libraries is complete then you are set to go.
As mentioned earlier in the article, Yelp deploys Captchas and IP blocking when it suspects any scraping business or bot-activity.
In this case also it will try to do the same so you need 2Captcha to solve the Captcha issue. To prevent your IP from getting blocked, you need to use proxies.
These will basically help you in hiding your original IP address and these intermediary servers will provide you with alternative IP addresses.
The next step is the coding of your scraper. This is dependent on the data that you are trying to scrape. In general, you will need to inspect the web page’s HTML.
While doing so you will also have to keep an eye out for any tags that contain your required data. You will have to put BeautifulSoup to use in order to pick out your data.
Conclusion
Web scraping from any social media website has become an important part of most business research.
A lot of businesses cannot even move beyond web scraping when it comes to market research.
The main reason for this is the amount of well sorted and good quality data that you get from scraping cannot be found in any other place.
In this fast paced world you can barely stop people for a second to ask a question.
Let alone stopping them for minutes at a time to answer surveys for your business research.
Web scraping provides you with all the data and behavior patterns that you could possibly need to power up that research.
Websites like Yelp are a hub of raw data and if you can get a software that can give you a well sorted version of it in the forms of spreadsheets then you should totally jump on the Yelp scraping bandwagon.
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Written by Jason Wise
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