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How to Scrape and Extract Data from Search Engines, Business Directories and Social Media Sites
How to Scrape and Extract Data from Search Engines, Business Directories and Social Media Sites
In this guide, we will show you how to scrape and extract data from the Search Engines, Business Directories and Social Media Sites using our Web Scraper and Email Extractor. Our lead generation tool will scrape and extract emails and other data from multiple search engines and platforms and save them into a master CSV spreadsheet file.
What makes our web scraper and email harvester truly different is the fact that it can scrape and extract data from multiple platforms and save all the extracted data into a single Excel CSV spreadsheet file. In practical terms, this means that you can scrape Google Maps, Facebook Business Pages, Google, Bing, Yellow Pages, Yelp and other platforms at the same time. All the extracted data is stored centrally and the duplicates are automatically removed.
How to Scrape and Extract Emails and Business Data from the Search Engines
First, you will need to run the CBT Web Scraper and Email Extractor. Next, go to settings and select the Search Engines/Dictionaries tab. To view only the search engines, select only the Search Engines option. You can then select the search engines that you would like to scrape. The software supports Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, ASK, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, SO. We are constantly adding new search engines. You may also notice that next to some search engines such as Google and Bing, you will see a plus sign next to the search engine name inside the search engine tree. Double click on that plus icon to expand the selections. You can then choose what country you would like to scrape. Do not expand the option and select the main search engines if you would like to scrape for international results. If you are planning to scrape a particular country, it is recommended to use the local search engine and local proxies. You can scrape multiple search engines but it is recommended to only scrape a couple as most of the results will be duplicitous. We recommend scraping Google and having Bing as a fallback search engine.
How to Scrape and Extract Data and Emails from Google Maps
If you are planning to scrape Google Maps, you can select your country by expanding the options or check the main Google maps to scrape the international version. When scraping Google Maps, you will need to use a different set of keywords to the ones that you would use for the search engines. This is because Google Maps operates by giving users local results. Therefore, a broad keywords list that would work with the search engines, will not work with Google Maps. For Google Maps, you can use our Footprints tools on the main GUI to generate geo-targeted keywords. You will need to use a main root keyword to identify your business niche and then create keywords for each city and post code. This way, the web scraper would scrape for businesses in all geographical areas. Using a couple of broad keywords is not enough to get all the results from Google Maps. All you will get is results limited to one area. When creating your keywords, you will need to think about how popular your business niche is. For example, if you are searching for vape shops or CBD businesses, then you will probably be ok with your keyword + cities as these broader keywords will capture all the businesses. Now let's consider beauty businesses such as beauty salons. As these are more popular, a Google Maps search for Beauty Salon + city will not capture all the results. Therefore, you will need to use keywords with Beauty Salon + City + Post Code/Zip Code.
How to Scrape and Extract Data from Yellow Pages and Yelp Business Directories
Yellow Pages and Yelp business directories are similar to Google Maps in the sense that they focus on presenting users with local search results. Usually, it is enough to scrape for your main keyword and different cities or states. Next to UK and USA Yellow Pages and Yelp, you will see a plus icon. Double click on it to expand the options. You can then select any or all the cities and states. The web scraper will then use your keyword + city/state to scrape and extract data from these directories. This is a quicker option to generating your own keywords using the footprints keyword generator tool.
How to Scrape and Extract Data from Facebook Business Pages?
By default, the web scraper and email harvester will access the Facebook Business Page of every business/website that contains a Facebook link. Instead of going to Facebook and searching for a business page, the website scraper will first go to a website, find a Facebook Business Page link and then scrape and extract data from that page. Facebook Business Page scraping is done automatically for scraping across all platforms and websites. It is important to ensure that you are logged in into Facebook as sometimes, Facebook will need you to be logged in in order to view a business page.
How to Scrape and Extract Data from Twitter?
By default, CBT web scraper and email extractor will scrape a company's/website's Twitter page if it cannot find a Facebook Business Page for a website. This is performed automatically across all platforms.
TIP: Scrape the Search Engines and Business Directories separately. The keywords that you are going to use for the search engines and business directories will differ quite drastically. Therefore, it is best to keep the search engine and business directory scraping separate. You can then merge the CSV files using our CSV merger tool.
