How to Scrape Facebook Business Pages from Search in 2024 [No-Code]
Shehriar Awan●
March 21, 2024
●
7 min read
Imagine you’ve a list of keywords and you have to collect Facebook business pages from those keywords along with metadata. Doing it manually would take ages.
You can do it programmatically by coding a data scraping tool. But not everyone is a pro coder and even for pros, Facebook’s consistently changing structure is a challenge.
In this article, we’re going to learn how to scrape Facebook business pages from any search keyword, without coding and just using a search URL.
But why would I need to scrape them? Let’s explore some use cases.
Why Scrape Facebook business pages?
Facebook is still the world's most popular social media platform. More than 200 million businesses use it every month.
Getting access to this data goldmine can help in:
- Market Research
- Lead Generation
- Targeted Outreach
- Business Directory Creation
- Influencer Marketing
But is it legal to scrape Facebook data?
Is it legal to scrape Facebook business pages?
The answer is not straightforward. To give you better understanding of legality of Facebook data scraping, let’s break down this question into two parts:
- Does Facebook allow data scraping?
- Is it legal to scrape data from Facebook?
The answer to the first question is no. Facebook doesn’t allow web scraping. They clearly state web scraping is a violation of Facebook’s terms.
So does this mean scraping Facebook data is illegal? Well, Facebook did file a lawsuit against an Israeli firm BrandTotal for collecting users’ personal information.
BrandTotal’s product UpVoice – a chrome extension that collected Facebook ads data was secretly also collecting users’ personal information. You can read more about the case here.
In short, BranTotal agreed that they would update their product and not collect personal data. This resulted in a settlement between Meta and BrandTotal.
Collecting personal information of users without consent is not only ethically wrong but also illegal. But does this make scraping public data illegal too?
If you study this case and another case referred during proceedings i.e. LinkedIn vs HiQ Labs, it’s clear that scraping publicly available data is fully legal.
Facebook itself has defined what’s public information and what’s private data in its help center. This also includes pages, groups, content you post on pages and groups.
Since business pages are Publicly available data, you don’t need a logged in account to view that information, it’s completely legal to scrape Facebook pages.
For more information regarding legality of web scraping, you can check the legal category in Lobstr blog.
But is there no official API to get the data I need?
Does Facebook have any API?
Yes, Facebook does offer GraphAPI for collecting data. But just like any other official APIs, it has limitations, making it useless for collecting data at scale.
- Long review process
- Rate limits
- Too complicated to work with
I’ve already covered all about Facebook API in my previous article – How to Scrape Facebook Pages in 2024 [No-Code]
Now let’s address the real elephant 🐘 in the room.
How to scrape Facebook business pages from search without coding
The best way to scrape Facebook pages for non-techies is – using no-code Facebook page scrapers. So we’re going to use Facebook Pages Search Export, the best one in the market.
Cool features
- 12 key data points
- Cloud-based, no install required
- 10 results per minute
- Schedule feature
- Direct export to Google Sheets and Amazon S3
- Developer-friendly API
Pricing
- Free plan: 4500 results per month
- Premium plan: €0.93 per 1k results
- Business plan: €0.58 per 1k results
- Enterprise plan: €0.46 per 1k results
Scraping Facebook business pages from search using Lobstr.io - Step by step guide
It literally takes 2 minutes to scrape all pages from any Facebook search query. We’ll do it in 6 simple and easy steps.
- Get search URL
- Create Squid
- Sync Account & Add tasks
- Adjust behavior
- Launch
- Enjoy
Let’s go!! 💨
Step 1 - Get search URL(s)
With Lobstr, you only need a search URL as input. To get the search link, go to Facebook.com, search a keyword, select pages, and copy the URL.
For this tutorial, let’s search for business pages of accountants in New York.
Here goes our URL:
Now let’s go to Lobstr.io dashboard and launch our Facebook pages scraper.
Step 2 - Create Squid
Next, login to your Lobstr.io account. Don’t have one? It’s free! Sign up now. Once logged in, click Create a new Squid button.
Then search ‘facebook pages’ and select Facebook Pages Search Export squid. That’s it. We just created our Squid.
Step 3 - Sync account & Add tasks
Next you’ll be asked to sync your Facebook account. You can do it by installing Lobstr Account Sync Add-on. You can install it from the Google Chrome Webstore.
Install the Add-on, and click Yes I want to sync button on your Lobstr dashboard. This will automatically sync your Facebook account to Lobstr safely. No login credentials needed.
Why sync my account? Although Facebook shows pages without login, to extract data, you’ll have to login. That’s why we need you to sync your account, for seamless data extraction.
Once synced, click Save and the next option is Add tasks.
Here we’ll paste the search URL we copied from Facebook. You can also add multiple URLs. Got hundreds of them? No worries, use Upload file option to import them with a single click.
Now let’s tweak some settings to adjust our crawler’s behavior. Click Save and move to the next step.
Step 4 - Adjust behavior
In basic settings, you get to choose when to end the run. This option is useful if you’ve got thousands of tasks and limited daily credits.
With the when to end run option, you can use your daily credits across multiple days.
Then we’ve got concurrency. Do you feel 10 results per minute is slow? You can increase scraping speed up to 40x by increasing the concurrency.
Then we have 2 more options in advanced settings i.e.
- Unique Results: Removes duplicates for a streamlined output.
- No Line Breaks: Removes line breaks from text fields.
Next option is Notifications. You can opt to receive real-time notifications via email whenever a run completes successfully or when it pauses due to any error or some other reason.
Now let’s prepare to launch. 🚀
Step 5 - Launch
Let's get this show on the road! Launch your crawler Manually for instant data collection. Just click Save & Extract and your Facebook scraper starts bringing the data for you.
But who wants to babysit their dashboard? That's where scheduling saves the day. Choose Repeatedly, set your desired data-gathering schedule and relax.
Pick your launch preference, hit Save, and voila! Your Facebook scraper is now on autopilot.
Step 6 - Enjoy
You can view the collected data from Facebook pages in your dashboard by clicking the Results tab. Once a job completes, you can download the data as a csv file.
Here’s how the data looks like in an Excel spreadsheet. You can convert csv to Excel easily by saving the csv file as xlxs.
Prefer Google Sheets? No need to manually import data to Google Sheets. You can use the Delivery option in your console to export data directly to Google Sheets and Amazon S3.
That’s it. We just scraped Facebook pages from search, without coding and without spending a single penny.
FAQs
Does this Facebook scraper collect business contact information?
Yes, you can collect addresses, phone numbers, and websites along with other Facebook page data.
Can I scrape Facebook groups, Facebook posts, and Facebook profiles using this tool?
No, this web scraper only collects Facebook business pages data. You can not use it for posts, profiles, or groups scraping.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap on how to scrape Facebook business pages from search without coding. You can try Facebook Pages Search Export for free. Do give it a test drive.
Also check out our store for more no-code automations. Didn’t find what you were looking for? You can submit your ideas here.
Shehriar Awan Self-proclaimed Head of Content @ lobstr.io. I write all those awesome how-tos, listicles, and (they deserve) troll our competitors.
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