Facebook Place Scraper

An Apify actor that scrapes Facebook Place listings based on a search keyword. It extracts detailed public information from Facebook Place pages for lead generation and data collection.

Overview

This actor performs targeted searches on Facebook for places (like businesses, hotels, or points of interest). You provide a keyword (e.g., "hotels in Ahmedabad"), and it returns a structured list of matching Facebook Places with their available public details.

Key Features

• Keyword-Based Scraping: Finds Facebook Places relevant to your search term.
• Comprehensive Data Extraction: For each place, it scrapes:
  • placeName: The name of the business or location.
  • place_fburl: The direct URL to the Facebook page.
  • place_profile_picture: The profile image URL.
  • place_text: Summary text containing category, price indicator, location, and follower count.
  • place_description: The description from the page's 'About' section.
• Cookie Authentication: Uses a logged-in Facebook session cookie to access data, helping to avoid blocks.
• Fast Performance: Capable of scraping approximately 500 data points per second.
• Multiple Export Formats: Results can be downloaded as JSON, Excel, CSV, or text files.

How to Use

Input Requirements

You need to provide two main inputs to run the actor:

1. Facebook Cookie: A session cookie from a logged-in Facebook account. This is required for the scraper to function.
2. Keyword: Your search term (e.g., "coffee shops in Berlin").

Steps to Run

1. Obtain Your Facebook Cookie:
   • Install the Chrome extension "Export cookie JSON file for Puppeteer".
   • Log into Facebook in your Chrome browser.
   • Open the extension and click "Export cookies as JSON". Copy the cookie string from the downloaded file.
2. Configure the Actor:
   • In the actor's input field labeled "Facebook Cookie", paste the copied cookie string.
   • In the "keyword" field, enter your search query.
3. Start the Job: Click "Save" and then the "Start" button to begin scraping.

Input/Output

Input:
* facebook_cookie (String): Your active Facebook session cookie.
* keyword (String): The search term to find relevant places.

Output:
The actor outputs an array of objects, each representing one Facebook Place. The structure is as follows:

[
  {
    "placeName": "Hotel Example",
    "place_fburl": "https://www.facebook.com/hotelexample",
    "place_profile_picture": "https://fbcdn.net/...profile_pic.jpg",
    "place_text": "Hotel · Near Central Station · 1200 followers",
    "place_description": "A description from the place's About section."
  }
]

Demo & Support:
* Demo video for getting cookies: https://youtu.be/yYJ6l2jm83Q
* Full usage demo: https://youtu.be/7SFlp1WChWI
* For issues, contact: bhansalisoft781986@gmail.com