Introduction to Google Maps Scraping
Dealing with variable internet projects, you may at times face the necessity to scrape data from Google Maps or a certain site with a Google Maps-like widget. The perfect example of such a resource is the Yellow Pages providing maps for local stores and other locations.
A common way to gather information about certain objects is to scrape data from an interactive map with the help of an off-the-shelf tool, create a code by yourself, or turn to experts for custom tool creation or data delivery.
Today, we are going to share some scraping tools that may come in handy to scrape Google Maps results.
How to Extract Google Map Data with Places API of Google Maps Platform
Naturally, Places API should be mentioned first, when speaking about the methods to gather places details from Google Maps. Though the Places API is not free, it’s a native google solution in the Google Console that has a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
It helps developers retrieve fresh data about millions of locations with HTTP requests via the API. To use this tool, a user should create a billing account in Google, sign-up for the Google Cloud Platform account to access the API, create a project within Google console, and make its initial setup and enable the API Key to the Places API.
It will allow you to start making your API requests. Then you can retrieve the data allowed by Places API fields. Unfortunately, there are restrictions, and you should check it beforehand to make sure you can scrape the data you need.
How to Scrape Data from Google with ParseHub
ParseHub is a Google Maps scraper with the free download, however, to use it for scraping maps data, you should make sure the information you need is in the HTML code on the page. To check this, you open the ParseHub site tab and right-click on the map, opening the Inspect element option. It will allow you to see into the HTML of the page that can be scraped by ParseHub.
It’s also vital to ensure that the details you need to scrape off the map are not available somewhere else on the page or that they can not be gathered in some other way. In case it’s possible, it’s better to choose alternative ways of this data retaining and avoid the hassle of interactive Google Map scraping.
As to the interactive Google Map with pins – if you can find a pin on a map, the ParseHub tool will also be able to select it.
How to Scrape Google Maps with Octoparse
One more free Google Maps scraper for the non-programmers who need to extract data is Octoparse. It allows the users to create crawlers that will scrape data for them. Octoparse’s features allow crawler customization so that you can deal with 99% of sites with complicated structures, maps among them.
What is more, Octoparse contains templates to make data scraping easier and faster, Google Maps included.
Octoparse solutions can run both in the cloud and on local PCs, which makes it a powerful tool, that can be used with various equipment. Octoparse is powerful and easy-to-use, you’ll learn how to build your own crawler within seconds with its industry-leading data auto-detection feature.
Data Delivery Service to Get Up-to-date Google Maps Object Details
If you need data for some analysis, address list generation, or some other simple tasks, tools, and simple coding will do with a bit of persistence. In case you need data for some extensive project, that requires accuracy and much detail, it’s always safer to turn to professional data scraping specialists. In such a way, you can get accurate data that will match your requirements and needs 100%.
How to Scrape Google Places – FAQ
How to scrape Google Maps?
Google Maps have a native API solution, which is called Places API. It is a paid solution available within the Google Cloud Platform for developers. Therefore, you need to create a GCP account and get the API key to scrape Google Maps. With the API key, you can scrape Google Maps using online scrapers like ParseHup, Octoparse, or ProxyCrawl platform for anonymous web scraping.
How to scrape data from Google Maps using Python?
Python 3 with Selenium and Web driver can help you retrieve place titles, ratings, descriptions, addresses, and contact numbers.
Where to get Google Maps API?
Visit Google Maps Platform for developers and create an account. Sign in and go to the Credentials section, choose to Create credentials, and generate an API key.
Final thoughts on Google Maps Data Scraping
In case your crawling task is not much complicated you can always find some open-source projects on GitHub or free tools available online and there is no need to reinvent the wheels. With more complex tasks, it’s better to turn to experts that are ready to provide you with a custom tool or exclusive service.
To find out what solution is best for your project, schedule a free consultation with a DataOx expert for free and discuss all the nuances.
