Scraping Better business bureau (bbb.org) data

Chris Miranda -

The better business bureau is a great directory to find local businesses! You can scrape to BBB to create a list for lead generation

You can download ParseHub for free

It’s now time to start scraping data from BBB.

  1. Install and Open ParseHub, click on “New Project” and enter the URL you will be scraping. In this case, we are scraping the search results page for plumbers in Toronto. The page will now render inside the app.
  2. Make your first selection by clicking on the name of the first business on the list. It will be highlighted in green to indicate that it has been selected. The rest of the business names will be highlighted in Yellow. In the left sidebar, rename your selection to “business”.
  3. Now click on the second business name on the page to select them all. All business names on the page will now be highlighted in green.
  4. ParseHub is now extracting the name and bbb link for each business on the page. Let’s extract more data. Start by clicking on the PLUS(+) sign next to your business selection and click on the “Relative Select” commands.
  5. Now click on the name of the first business on the page and then on the phone number next to it. An arrow will appear to show the association you’re creating. On the left sidebar, rename your selection to “phone”.
  6. Repeat steps 4-5 to select and extract more data from this page. We will repeat these steps and extract the business address, number of reviews and business website. Your project should look something like this:

Adding Pagination

ParseHub is now extracting all the data you’ve selected from every business on the first page of search results. Let’s now set it up to extract data from more pages of results.

  1. First, use the browser tabs and the tabs on the left side of the app to go back to your main template and the search results page.
  2. Now click on the PLUS(+) sign next to your “page” selection and choose the select command.
  3. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and click on the “next” link. Rename your selection to “pagination”.
  4. Use the icon next to your “pagination” selection to expand it.
  5. Now delete both extract commands under your “pagination” selection by using the icons next to them.
  6. Now use the PLUS(+) command next to your “pagination” selection and choose the “click” command.
  7. A pop up will appear asking you if this a “next page” link. Click on “Yes” and enter the number of additional pages you’d like to scrape. In this case, we will scrape 4 more pages.

Running your Scrape

It is now time to run your scrape.

To do this, click on the green “Get Data” button in the left sidebar. Here you, you can test, run or schedule your scrape.

In this case, we will run it right away. ParseHub is now off to scrape the data you have selected from Better Business Bureau.

Final Thoughts

Once your scrape has completed, you will be able to download your data as an Excel or JSON file.

If you run into any issues during your project, please reach out to us via the live chat on our site and we will be happy to assist you.

Happy Scraping!