Scrape Google Local Place from Organic Search with Python
What will be scraped
Imports
import requests, lxml
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
Google Local Pack API
Iterating over rich, structured JSON is better than coding everything from scratch without the need to use regex, create a parser from scratch and maintain it. Also, no need to figure out how to bypass block from Google and other search engines.
import json
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
params = {
"api_key": "...", # https://serpapi.com/manage-api-key
"engine": "google", # search engine
"q": "mcdonalds", # search query
"gl": "us", # country to search from
"hl": "en" # language
}
search = GoogleSearch(params) # where data extraction happens
results = search.get_dict() # JSON -> Python dict
for result in results['local_results']['places']:
print(json.dumps(result, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))
-------------------------
'''
# English result:
{
"position": 1,
"title": "McDonald's",
"place_id": "18096022638459706144",
"lsig": "AB86z5UHvsX5Pdo5ua4vplcxlXYG",
"place_id_search": "https://serpapi.com/search.json?device=desktop&engine=google&gl=us&google_domain=google.com&hl=en&lsig=AB86z5UHvsX5Pdo5ua4vplcxlXYG&ludocid=18096022638459706144&q=mcdonalds&tbm=lcl",
"rating": "A",
"links": {
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/location/VA/RICHMOND/7527-STAPLES-MILL-RD/3735.html?cid=RF:YXT:GMB::Clicks",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+7527+Staples+Mill+Rd,+Richmond,+VA+23228/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x89b115b9ff1b78cd:0xfb21fcb67cd15b20?sa=X&hl=en&gl=us"
},
"phone": "(804) 266-8600",
"address": "Richmond, VA",
"hours": "Closed ⋅ Opens 5:30AM",
"gps_coordinates": {
"latitude": 37.618504,
"longitude": -77.49884
}
}
-------------------------
# Arabic results:
{
"position": 1,
"title": "McDonald's",
"place_id": "2793317375272005807",
"lsig": "AB86z5XgEbNCVDhyL9L0Vp7aqSA4",
"place_id_search": "https://serpapi.com/search.json?device=desktop&engine=google&gl=us&google_domain=google.com&hl=ar&lsig=AB86z5XgEbNCVDhyL9L0Vp7aqSA4&ludocid=2793317375272005807&q=mcdonalds&tbm=lcl",
"rating": "A",
"links": {
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/location/WA/SPOKANE/1617-NORTH-HAMILTON-STREET/36304.html?cid=RF:YXT:GMB::Clicks",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+1617+N+Hamilton+St,+Spokane,+WA+99202/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x549e18c208497f9b:0x26c3db5a6a03b0af?sa=X&hl=ar&gl=us"
},
"phone": "(509) 484-8641",
"address": "1617 N Hamilton St",
"hours": "مغلق ⋅ سوف يفتح في 6:00 ص",
"gps_coordinates": {
"latitude": 47.672504,
"longitude": -117.39688
}
}
'''
DIY Process
Selecting CSS selectors to extract container with all data, title, address, phone (if there), open hours, place options, website, directions link to Google Maps.
SelectorGadget extension were used in the illustrated GIF.
Extract phone numbers correctly
To extract phone numbers no matter what language and country is used, e.g. German, Japanese, French, Italian, Arabic, etc. I used regex which you can see in action on regex101.
It also could be done with xpath but beautifulsoup doesn't support xpath directly and using lxml.etree that supports xpath I didn't want either (Examples from Ian Hopkinson on GitHub). I found really difficult or impossible to make it work with CSS selectors, so regex was used instead.
Firstly, a GIF illustration for a bit of familiarization.
css selector gives different elements when language or country is changed.Secondly, it's because of this (French language/country was used):
Thirdly, now you see that sometimes <span> with a class lqhpac have 2 or 3 <div> elements inside it and only the phone numbers need to be extracted. That's why regular expression comes into play.
A quick note: this issue doesn't occur at all if you're using hl=en&gl=us and this step could be skipped if you don't need data other than English.
Solution
The solution is incredibly simple, yet does what it is supposed to:
- locates
·symbol that always appears. - creates a capture group for the phone numbers and uses
.*which selects everything afterward. - the final regular expression will look like this:
· ?(.*)
The screenshot below shows what is being captured with regular expression. Notice how the phone numbers differ and are still being captured.
You can learn about regular expressions on regexone, can't recommend it enough, such a great place to learn regex.
Full DIY Code
import requests, lxml, re, json
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
headers = {
"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.102 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.19582"
}
# works with different countries, languages
params = {
"q": "mcdonalds",
"gl": "jp",
"hl": "ja", # japanese
}
response = requests.get("https://www.google.com/search", headers=headers, params=params)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'lxml')
local_results = []
for result in soup.select('.VkpGBb'):
title = result.select_one('.dbg0pd span').text
try:
website = result.select_one('.yYlJEf.L48Cpd')['href']
except:
website = None
try:
directions = f"https://www.google.com{result.select_one('.yYlJEf.VByer')['data-url']}"
except:
directions = None
address_not_fixed = result.select_one('.lqhpac div').text
# removes phone number from "address_not_fixed" variable
# https://regex101.com/r/cwLdY8/1
address = re.sub(r' · ?.*', '', address_not_fixed)
phone = ''.join(re.findall(r' · ?(.*)', address_not_fixed))
try:
hours = result.select_one('.dXnVAb').previous_element
except:
hours = None
try:
options = result.select_one('.dXnVAb').text.split('·')
except:
options = None
local_results.append({
'title': title,
'phone': phone,
'address': address,
'hours': hours,
'options': options,
'website': website,
'directions': directions,
})
print(json.dumps(local_results, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))
------------------------------------------
'''
# Japanese results:
{
"title": "マクドナルド 上田バイパス店",
"phone": "0268-28-4551",
"address": "長野県上田市",
"hours": " ⋅ 営業開始: 6:00",
"options": [
"イートイン",
"店先受取可",
"宅配"
],
"website": "https://map.mcdonalds.co.jp/map/20515",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//%E3%80%92386-0001+%E9%95%B7%E9%87%8E%E7%9C%8C%E4%B8%8A%E7%94%B0%E5%B8%82%E4%B8%8A%E7%94%B0+%E5%AD%97%E9%A6%AC%E9%A3%BC%E5%85%8D%EF%BC%91%EF%BC%98%EF%BC%94%EF%BC%90%EF%BC%8D%EF%BC%91+%E3%83%9E%E3%82%AF%E3%83%89%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89+%E4%B8%8A%E7%94%B0%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%91%E3%82%B9%E5%BA%97/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x601dbd18e95fda63:0x6e7cae08b9fb4c6c?sa=X&hl=ja&gl=jp"
}
------------------------------------------
# Arabic results:
{
"title": "McDonald's",
"phone": "",
"address": "Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires Province",
"hours": " ⋅ سوف يفتح في 7:00 ص",
"options": [
"الأكل داخل المكان",
"خدمة الطلب أثناء القيادة",
"التسليم بدون تلامس"
],
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.com.ar/",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+Brown+266,+B8000+Bah%C3%ADa+Blanca,+Provincia+de+Buenos+Aires/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x95edbcb37fd850d3:0x5223e03c35a5110d?sa=X&hl=ar&gl=ar"
}
------------------------------------------
# Arabic results №2 (hl=ar (Arabic), gl=dz (Algeria))
{
"title": "McDonald's",
"phone": "+212 669-599239",
"address": "تطوان، المغرب",
"hours": "مفتوح ⋅ سيتم إغلاقه في 10:00 م",
"options": [
"الأكل داخل المكان",
"خدمة الطلب أثناء القيادة",
"التسليم بدون تلامس"
],
"website": "http://www.mcdonalds.ma/",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's%D8%8C+Avenue+9+Avril,+%D8%AA%D8%B7%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86+93000%D8%8C+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%B1%D8%A8%E2%80%AD/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0xd0b430da777d3cd:0x31a4be8cb9167e69?sa=X&hl=ar&gl=dz"
}
------------------------------------------
# French results:
{
"title": "McDonald's",
"phone": "04 70 28 00 16",
"address": "Saint-Victor",
"hours": "Ouvert ⋅ Ferme à 22:30",
"options": [
"Repas sur place",
"Service de drive",
"Livraison"
],
"website": "http://www.restaurants.mcdonalds.fr/mcdonalds-saint-victor",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+Zone+Industrielle+de+la+Loue,+03410+Saint-Victor/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x47f0a77a2fb7e253:0x7c68ab4798e1655a?sa=X&hl=fr&gl=fr"
}
------------------------------------------
# Russian results:
{
"title": "Макдоналдс",
"phone": "8 (495) 103-38-85",
"address": "Москва",
"hours": "Открыто ⋅ Закроется в 00:30",
"options": [
"Еда в заведении",
"Еда навынос",
"Бесконтактная доставка"
],
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.ru/",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B4%D1%81,+%D1%83%D0%BB.+%D0%9A%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F,+2,+%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%B0,+121059/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x46b54b0efab9de2f:0x2e3336864cc08e8f?sa=X&hl=ru&gl=ru"
}
------------------------------------------
# German results:
{
"title": "McDonald's",
"phone": "03622 900140",
"address": "Laucha",
"hours": "Geöffnet ⋅ Schließt um 00:00",
"options": [
"Speisen vor Ort",
"Drive-in",
"Kein Lieferdienst"
],
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/restaurant-suche.html/l/laucha/gewerbestrasse-1/549&cid=listing_0549",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+Gewerbestra%C3%9Fe+1,+99880+Laucha/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x47a480ee11b6e809:0x403e2aa4d3d85996?sa=X&hl=de&gl=de"
}
------------------------------------------
# English results:
{
"title": "McDonald's",
"phone": "(620) 251-3330",
"address": "Coffeyville, KS",
"hours": " ⋅ Opens 5AM",
"options": [
"Curbside pickup",
"Delivery"
],
"website": "https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/location/KS/COFFEYVILLE/302-W-11TH/4581.html?cid=RF:YXT:GMB::Clicks",
"directions": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir//McDonald's,+302+W+11th+St,+Coffeyville,+KS+67337/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e2!1m2!1m1!1s0x87b784f6803e4c81:0xf5af9c9c89f19918?sa=X&hl=en&gl=us"
}
'''