YouTube Community Posts Scraper

Scrapes community posts from YouTube channels, extracting post content, engagement metrics, and attachments for analysis.

Overview

This Apify actor scrapes the Community tab of YouTube channels. It extracts structured data from posts, including text, author, dates, likes, comments, polls, and attached media (images/videos). It's designed for analyzing audience engagement and content strategy, distinct from general comment or video scrapers.

Key Features

• Targeted Scraping: Focuses on specific YouTube channel community tabs.
• Comprehensive Data Extraction: Captures:
  • Post ID, author, text, and publish date.
  • Engagement metrics (like and comment counts).
  • Poll data (choices and results).
  • Attachments (images, video thumbnails, attachment type).
• Bulk Operations: Scrapes multiple posts in a single run.
• Flexible Output: Exports data in JSON, CSV, XML, or HTML formats.
• Integrated Comment Scraping: Can optionally retrieve comments on each community post.
• Direct Operation: Runs without requiring proxy configuration.

How to Use

1. Log in to your Apify account.
2. Find the actor "YouTube Community Posts Scraper" in the Apify Store.
3. Configure Input: In the actor's input field, provide:
   • The YouTube channel URL (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/@channelname).
   • (Optional) The maximum number of posts to scrape.
4. Select Output Format: Choose your preferred format (JSON, CSV, etc.).
5. Run: Click "Start" to begin execution.
6. Download: Once finished, download the dataset from the actor's run results.

Input/Output

Input: Requires a YouTube channel URL. Advanced options allow limiting post count and enabling comment scraping.

Output: A structured dataset. Below is an example of the primary JSON output schema:

{
  "postId": "Ugz...",
  "author": "Channel Name",
  "postText": "Check out our new video!",
  "date": "2023-10-26",
  "likes": 1500,
  "comments": 243,
  "pollChoices": ["Option A", "Option B"],
  "images": ["https://...image1.jpg"],
  "videoThumbnail": "https://...thumb.jpg",
  "attachmentType": "video"
}

The data is available for download in the selected format directly from the Apify platform after the run completes.