Today, LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media ever. Its power is hidden in the simple fact. Almost every 3 seconds, someone finds a good job on LinkedIn. So you can call it a real wizard of a job search, or just a place where users’ profiles and the social network as-is contain lots of information you can use for your goals. How can you do that? Here is the main tip of the day. Just scrape LinkedIn!
Hmm… that arises some more questions, well? Let’s dwell deeper on what is LinkedIn data scraping and how to do it with the best results. All the secrets of how to scrape LinkedIn data and what to get from this social network are right there in our article.
What is LinkedIn and why scraping LinkedIn data may be useful for you?
The essence of LinkedIn is to provide a relationship between potential hirers and employees, along with building bridges between companies in their strive for cooperation. Today, LinkedIn provides the most sought-out information that will be a godsend for both B2B and B2C goals.
Each day, new LinkedIn profiles appear and its users generate tons of megabytes of data. These data could be useful for multiple goals. Yet combing it manually is merely impossible. That’s the reason you need a special tool in your hand to extract the information you need and to weed out all that is not necessary for you.
LinkedIn data scraping process: what is it?
Especially in order to process large amounts of data and extract the necessary information from them, special algorithms were invented – the so-called scrapers. Thanks to the use of special technologies, the scraper can quickly analyze large amounts of data, extract those that match keywords and parsing parameters. It then extracts the filtered data, like a net pulls a fish out of the water, leaving everything else in the pond.
The selected data is then converted into a form convenient for use – a file of a certain format, which can later be used at your discretion.
Such a tool has shown especially high efficiency for scraping social media data. And scraping from LinkedIn is no exception.
Is scraping data from LinkedIn legal?
The matter of the legal status of LinkedIn scrapers is one of the most acute questions that arise when you need to scrape LinkedIn data. Despite lots of services considering scrapers to be outlawed because they can be a threat to users’ privacy, there is a precedent that proves the legal status of web scraping on LinkedIn. It is the precedent hiQ and LinkedIn initiated in 2017. After the LinkedIn CEO asserted to hiQ, that is one of the scrapping services, violated LinkedIn’s User Agreement, the 9th Circuit Court decided on giving hiQ a golden ticket and ruled not to consider this LinkedIn scraper a threat to the user’s privacy. Since that, you can claim that you are scraping LinkedIn data legally.
The best scraper for LinkedIn: what are the options?
What do you need when you want to provide data scraping on LinkedIn? It is the toolset that will cope with the task. These toolsets have overall name scrapers, and you can use several types of scraping tools for LinkedIn. Here is a brief explanation of each of them.
Scraping websites and their Pros&Cons
The first and most obvious way how to scrape LinkedIn is to use online scrapers built into the site structure. Such services are widely represented on the market today, and everyone can use them. But there are also some peculiarities. For example, the inability to process large data arrays with such built-in scrapers. Or the need for an expensive subscription if you need a LinkedIn web scraper all the time.
Hand-written LinkedIn scraping tools
Another option for data scraper for LinkedIn is small applications written by developers for each specific task. Such algorithms are quite suitable if you need to select only one or two parameters, but for large-scale parsing and subsequent processing of data into a convenient and readable form, they will not be enough. In addition, to create such LinkedIn data scrapers, you will either need to have enough programming skills or hire an experienced developer.
Web scraper for LinkedIn: API-based solutions
Today, it is obvious that effective LinkedIn web scraping requires agile solutions. The API-based LinkedIn scraping tool is the solution of that kind. As LinkedIn itself uses OAuth-based API for its users’ profiles, there is a good opportunity to do the same with Python LinkedIn scraping API.
As for the merits you can get when using LinkedIn API data mining, they are as follows:
- You can use both paid and free versions of such LinkedIn scraper tools.
- The efficiency of API solutions is higher than that of algorithms or web scrapers.
- Fine-tuning most of the best LinkedIn scraping tools allows you to parse and extract only the data you need.
Want to try LinkedIn API scraping? There is a wide selection of such solutions to use for the purpose. By reaching out to us, you can find out how our Data365 Social Media API can be helpful for extracting data for your project.
The benefits of scraping LinkedIn with Python technology
Let's focus a little on the features of LinkedIn scraping on Python. What are the benefits of such solutions?
- API solutions allow you to parse large amounts of data in a matter of minutes. You won't have to wait long.
- Customization is one of the most important qualities of APIs. With some LinkedIn API alternatives you can quickly customize your queries to meet your needs. Data365.co can also be helpful for extracting data.
- The ability to upload data in JSON format provides considerable benefits comparing with other formats, namely: compactness, simplicity in using as well as reading and writing, and compatibility with many languages.
- Wide range of options for filtering data. Localization, personal metrics, business specifics – all this can be configured.
Main goals for scraping LinkedIn
Why do you need LinkedIn scraping at all? Why think about which the best LinkedIn scraper to choose? Here are 5 examples of what this social network data is required for and where to use it.
- Get an influx of a new audience that may be interested in your products or services.
- Find the best employees for your company. If searching within LinkedIn doesn't turn up any results, why not compile a list of potential profitable human resources for your company's recruiters using the LinkedIn scraping API.
- Marketing & Social Media listening research. That is what LinkedIn scraper on Python is really good for.
- Investment goals. Companies represented on LinkedIn can be scraped and analyzed to decide which of them are worth your investments.
- Updating your databases. Each day, lots of people launch LinkedIn. Your web scrape on LinkedIn helps to update your databases with these newcomers.
LinkedIn profile scraper: what to get with it
The most informative part of LinkedIn is no doubt users’ profiles. Here is a lot of public information represented. Just consider all you can get when using scraping tools for other social networks and add lots of information about the work experience of each user, their allegiance to certain companies, and the scope of companies represented on the website. When you scrape LinkedIn by Python-based API, you can get the fullest scope of all these publicly available datafrom scraping LinkedIn profiles.
Yet, there is a question: how to scrape LinkedIn profiles, groups, and posts easily? It’s a matter of the solution chosen. There can be either different guides or live support available. Feel free to just ask for help to get needed information about the solution and its possibilities provided.
Personal info scrapper in LinkedIn profiles
First of all, it’s restricted to scrape for any personal data according to GDPR. Thus, you are allowed to mine only public data, which makes the user profile itself to be of interest for data collection. All the most important metrics for further processing are collected there. For example, you can collect information about the age and gender of users, their social status, expected salary, and residence. All this is easy to extract using LinkedIn profile scraping, in case it’s publicly available information.
LinkedIn company scraper at a glance
In addition to analyzing user profiles, company profiles are also of interest for scraping, keeping in mind the GDPR principles and regulations. You can easily get information about competitors or potential partners by region, number of employees, and field of activity. In addition, you can select other important public data from company profiles when you scrape LinkedIn profiles.
LinkedIn jobs scraper’s opportunities
When you scrape LinkedIn profiles, you can also get lots of public data concerning jobs and companies offering them. For example, if you need to get some metrics about the staff flow in your competitor’s company, you can apply Python scraping on LinkedIn to extract the number of fired employees from the company in a certain period. And that’s just a peak of an iceberg!
Yet, you are to prioritize the protection of user privacy by strictly extracting only publicly available information. It's important to note that while such tools facilitate data access, users must handle any personal data in accordance with GDPR regulations.
LinkedIn group scraper: getting info from groups
LinkedIn is more than just a database of professionals and companies. This is a social network where rather narrowly focused communication takes place. Accordingly, you can not only scrape a LinkedIn profile but also highlight the necessary public information in groups. In particular, this is an excellent source of information about trends, audience moods, and opinions about an event. To collect such public information, you can use the keyword scraping available in Python's LinkedIn scraping tools.
LinkedIn post scraper: some ideas about it
The same is the case with public posts on this social network. Parsing by keywords will help you find relevant news, posts of certain companies, and information discussed by users.
Summaries
We can conclude that scraping LinkedIn is a handy tool for analytics and forecasting. It is also useful for solving business problems, including in the B2B sector. Due to the availability of simple and affordable scrapers you can easily achieve your goals and operate with the necessary public information from LinkedIn to solve your problems. Or you can get in touch with us to find out how the Data365 Social Media API can help you solve your business needs by extracting data from social media networks.
