Scrape data in Google Maps

1) Go To Web page - to open the target web page

   · Click "+ Task" to start a task using Advanced Mode

     Advanced Mode is a highly flexible and powerful web scraping mode. For people who want to scrape from websites with complex structures, like Google.com/maps/, we strongly recommend Advanced Mode to start your data extraction project.

   · Paste the URL into the "Extraction URL" box and click "Save URL" to move on

     The default built-in browser is incompatible with Google Maps. Hence, we need to switch to a compatible browser.

   · Click "Save" to save your task

     Please notice that for version 7.02, before modifying Settings, you’ll need to have the task saved.

   · Click "Settings" and change your browser to "Firefox 45.0" and click "Save"  

     This step is necessary because the default browser (user agent) is not compatible with the Google Maps website. We need to change the "Browser" in settings manually. 

2) Create a pagination loop - to scrape all the results from multiple pages 

   · Turn on the "Workflow Mode" by switching the "Workflow" button in the top-right corner in Octoparse
     We strongly suggest you turn on the "Workflow Mode" to get a better picture of what you are doing with your task, just in case you mess up with the steps.

   · Click the next page button ">"

   · Click "Loop click Single Button" on "Action Tips"

   · Set up AJAX Load for the "Click to paginate" action
     Google Maps applies the AJAX technique to the pagination button. Therefore, we need to set up AJAX Load in the "Click to paginate" step.

     · Uncheck the box for "Retry when page remains unchanged (use discreetly for AJAX loading)"

     · Check the box for "Load the page with AJAX" and set up AJAX Timeout as 15 seconds

     · Click "OK" to save 

3) Create a "Loop Item" - to scrape all the item details on the current page 

   · Click "Go To Web Page" to go back to the first page
     When extracting data throughout multiple pages, you should always begin your task-building on the first page.

   · Select the first and the second section containing restaurant information on the current page

   · Click "Extract data in the loop" on the "Action Tips" panel
     Octoparse will automatically select all the sections on the current page. The manually selected sections will be highlighted in green with all the sub-elements highlighted in red. 

4) Extract data - to select the data for extraction 

   · Delete the unwanted data fields

     We will keep the restaurant name, rating, category, location, description, and hours.

   · Click "OK" to save

· Rename the fields by selecting from the pre-defined list or inputting on your own 

5) Start extraction - to run the task and get data

   · Click “Start Extraction” on the upper left side

   · Select “Local Extraction” to run the task on your computer, or select “Cloud Extraction” to run the task in the Cloud (for premium users only)

Here is the sample output. You can see some blank fields in the column “Description” and column "Hours".  This is because some restaurants do not contain any description and/or the hours of operation.

Si desea ver el contenido en español, por favor haga clic en: Cómo extraer las coordenadas de Google Maps

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