How to scrape Facebook and do it the best

Being the #1 social network around the world, Facebook is the largest source of content that can be used not only for fun. As there are 2.85+ billion registered users worldwide, Facebook offers considerable business opportunities, and these are not only the Marketplace of Official Business Pages.

Have you heard about Facebook scrape opportunities? This term refers to the ability to collect data from user profiles, posts, likes, and official articles issued on Facebook and other parts of that network. Making a brief example, you can get info about companies image or the number of positive/negative mentions about a particular brand on social networks.

Carrying out surveys or parsing each profile by hand is not a win-win option. Yet, using scraping tools, you can extract information and get it in some order. Let us look at the web scrape on Facebook in more detail to comprehend whether you need it and how efficiently to scrape data.

Facebook scrape tools: what are they?

The principle of Facebook data scraper's routine lies in its automation. That is why, if you need to scrape data from Facebook, you need to choose an efficient tool that will cope with that task of web scraping Facebook. Here is our tools shortlist you may appreciate the most, besides the official Facebook public data API.

It is one of the most famous scrappers and one of the oldest ones. This tool is compatible with all main OSs (Windows, Linux, macOS) and offers cloud-based solutions. Yet, its main drawback hides in paid options. Fourteen days of trial use is not enough when you set ambitious goals. And then you have to pay for it monthly.

This easy-to-operate tool suits using it for large-scale projects. It offers scrapping services for multiple websites and Facebook being among them. But for smaller goals, it is not a perfect match, as it offers a paid subscription for a considerable cost. If you try to scrape Facebook data in its trial period, you will fail, as Facebook is not available for scrapping for free in Octoparse.

This service is closer to the top, as it offers both paid and free options, including API-based access. Its main merit is in its user-friendly interface. Yet, there are fewer options for Facebook, and you cannot collect all kinds of data you need.

Data365 Social media API can also help you with extracting data from social media. You can contact our team to learn more about all the capabilities of our product.

What is Facebook data scraping used for?

Facebook is an inexhaustible source of information that can be used for several goals. Often, this data is a helper for achieving business goals, political and sociological investigations, etc. Using Facebook scrapes for pages is frequently called illegal activity. In the case of mining information available for publicity, the previous statement is not quite true, because any person can collect needed data without scraping. Although the last may take much longer depending on the task scope.

Analytic companies mainly use the scrape of Facebook pages for the following purposes of marketing research:

• Tracking competitor prices. Data that can get from scraping Facebook can help estimate the average price rate for products.
• Researching a targeted audience when scraping Facebook profiles is a good idea for launching a new product on the market.
  
• Monitoring news and events are also easily performed with it.
• Content efficiency analyses. Many businesses or opinion leaders use Facebook to promote their products or ideas. With scrapping tools, you can collect stats about your content and analyze it.

What types of data can you get when you scrape a Facebook page?

As for the data that can be obtained using Facebook scrapers, they directly depend on your goals. When you scrape Facebook user profiles, you can extract the info like ID, name, photos, current city, the number of followers, etc. In brief, all the information you may need about users.

When you scrape Facebook groups, you can also get info about the number of posts in the group, the number of likes, comments, main topics of posts, or mentions of particular keywords you need to calculate.

Similarly, you can collect data about product mentions and the popularity of events based on posts and comments. The possibilities of scraping software are limited only by your needs and the accuracy of key search queries.

Using the Facebook Scraper tool, you can easily extract publicly available information from Facebook pages.For more comprehensive data scraping techniques, check out our guides on Facebook photo scraping and scraping Facebook posts.

For example, Social Media API by Data365 also lets you get public data from several social media that give a competitive advantage in obtained analytics.

Why scrape Facebook posts for your business goals

As for extracting data from posts on a social network, then this is your opportunity to provide the following processes using Facebook page scraper:

• Analyzing the number of mentions of a company, product, personality, or informational occasion in the context of periods. For example, you can track how often your seasonal product is mentioned in a particular month.
• Collecting information about the emotional coloring of mentions. It helps to control the work on the company image, personality, or product.
  
• Track the needs of the target audience. For example, if your potential customers regularly mention they need some product, it is time to start thinking about whether it's time to offer it to your customers.

What the scrape of Facebook groups brings you

Facebook groups are not just a community, but also a real informational bombshell. Groups often have discussions on important topics. Posts, comments, and likes in Facebook groups can help you achieve your goals. In addition, you can scrape Facebook group posts to get information about the most active users, their requests, and their needs. It is a great way to explore the market or identify the non-obvious needs of the audience.

Benefits you get when scraping Facebook profile

User profiles are actually a dossier for each person. Scrapping services and programs easily extract information about sociological metrics from user profiles. The essence of scraping user profiles, primarily, is drawing up a portrait of the target audience and studying market segments by analyzing the profiles presented in this market. In the case of competition, analyzing information obtained from competitor profiles will help you find their weak points in communication and self-presentation to avoid them. That is why you need a Facebook profile scraper.

Some tips on how to scrape Facebook

To get the needed data, using a scraping service is not enough. Let us give a couple of tips on how to scrape data from Facebook.

1. First of all, decide on the tools. Will it be a paid service or API, or will you order writing an individual scraping script? For beginners, the best decision is to use some automated solutions that are easy to operate. When you need to extract data from Facebook to provide your customers with social media listening services, it is better to choose API-integrated solutions for Facebook scrapping, as some European companies did.
2. Ask yourself: What data do you need? Determine where this data is most likely to be found. For example, it is convenient to collect a pool of users with a specific metric (gender, age, interests) based on the analysis of user profiles. In the same way, you can choose mentions of a product or reaction to an event from posts, comments, and user reactions.
3. Create a keyword query that will help you find the data.
4. Export the collected information to the format with which you plan to work further. A reliable Facebook scrapping tool will allow you to transfer data to database formats, XML, CSV, or any other format. When you need some data for your product, app, or service, it is a win-win option to get them in JSON using API.
5. Analyze the data in your own way!

Knowing how to scrape Facebook posts, profiles, groups, business pages, comments, and so on is the key to obtaining comprehensive data. Scrapping helps to solve many problems in business, politics, and the social sphere. And the most important thing is to choose the right goals and tools to achieve them with scrapping.

Turn to our team to learn more about Data365.co API features and whether it can help you obtain data from social media in your case.