How to Scrape Facebook Business Pages from Search in 2024 [No-Code]

Imagine you’ve a list of keywords and you have to collect Facebook business pages from those keywords along with metadata. Doing it manually would take ages.

You can do it programmatically by coding a data scraping tool. But not everyone is a pro coder and even for pros, Facebook’s consistently changing structure is a challenge.

In this article, we’re going to learn how to scrape Facebook business pages from any search keyword, without coding and just using a search URL.

But why would I need to scrape them? Let’s explore some use cases.

Why Scrape Facebook business pages?

Getting access to this data goldmine can help in:

1. Market Research
2. Lead Generation
3. Targeted Outreach
4. Business Directory Creation
5. Influencer Marketing

But is it legal to scrape Facebook data?

Is it legal to scrape Facebook business pages?

The answer is not straightforward. To give you better understanding of legality of Facebook data scraping, let’s break down this question into two parts:

1. Does Facebook allow data scraping?
2. Is it legal to scrape data from Facebook?

In short, BranTotal agreed that they would update their product and not collect personal data. This resulted in a settlement between Meta and BrandTotal.

Collecting personal information of users without consent is not only ethically wrong but also illegal. But does this make scraping public data illegal too?

Since business pages are Publicly available data, you don’t need a logged in account to view that information, it’s completely legal to scrape Facebook pages.

But is there no official API to get the data I need?

Does Facebook have any API?

1. Long review process
2. Rate limits
3. Too complicated to work with

Now let’s address the real elephant 🐘 in the room.

How to scrape Facebook business pages from search without coding

Cool features

1. 12 key data points
2. Cloud-based, no install required
3. 10 results per minute
4. Schedule feature
5. Direct export to Google Sheets and Amazon S3
6. Developer-friendly API

Pricing

1. Free plan: 4500 results per month
2. Premium plan: €0.93 per 1k results
3. Business plan: €0.58 per 1k results
4. Enterprise plan: €0.46 per 1k results

Scraping Facebook business pages from search using Lobstr.io - Step by step guide

It literally takes 2 minutes to scrape all pages from any Facebook search query. We’ll do it in 6 simple and easy steps.

1. Get search URL
2. Create Squid
3. Sync Account & Add tasks
4. Adjust behavior
5. Launch
6. Enjoy

Let’s go!! 💨

Step 1 - Get search URL(s)

With Lobstr, you only need a search URL as input. To get the search link, go to Facebook.com, search a keyword, select pages, and copy the URL.

For this tutorial, let’s search for business pages of accountants in New York.

Here goes our URL:

Now let’s go to Lobstr.io dashboard and launch our Facebook pages scraper.

Step 2 - Create Squid

Next, login to your Lobstr.io account. Don’t have one? It’s free! Sign up now. Once logged in, click Create a new Squid button.

Then search ‘facebook pages’ and select Facebook Pages Search Export squid. That’s it. We just created our Squid.

Step 3 - Sync account & Add tasks

Install the Add-on, and click Yes I want to sync button on your Lobstr dashboard. This will automatically sync your Facebook account to Lobstr safely. No login credentials needed.

Once synced, click Save and the next option is Add tasks.

Now let’s tweak some settings to adjust our crawler’s behavior. Click Save and move to the next step.

Step 4 - Adjust behavior

In basic settings, you get to choose when to end the run. This option is useful if you’ve got thousands of tasks and limited daily credits.

Then we’ve got concurrency. Do you feel 10 results per minute is slow? You can increase scraping speed up to 40x by increasing the concurrency.

Then we have 2 more options in advanced settings i.e.

1. Unique Results: Removes duplicates for a streamlined output.
2. No Line Breaks: Removes line breaks from text fields.

Next option is Notifications. You can opt to receive real-time notifications via email whenever a run completes successfully or when it pauses due to any error or some other reason.

Now let’s prepare to launch. 🚀

Step 5 - Launch

Let's get this show on the road! Launch your crawler Manually for instant data collection. Just click Save & Extract and your Facebook scraper starts bringing the data for you.

But who wants to babysit their dashboard? That's where scheduling saves the day. Choose Repeatedly, set your desired data-gathering schedule and relax.

Pick your launch preference, hit Save, and voila! Your Facebook scraper is now on autopilot.

Step 6 - Enjoy

You can view the collected data from Facebook pages in your dashboard by clicking the Results tab. Once a job completes, you can download the data as a csv file.

Prefer Google Sheets? No need to manually import data to Google Sheets. You can use the Delivery option in your console to export data directly to Google Sheets and Amazon S3.

That’s it. We just scraped Facebook pages from search, without coding and without spending a single penny.

FAQs

Does this Facebook scraper collect business contact information?

Yes, you can collect addresses, phone numbers, and websites along with other Facebook page data.

Can I scrape Facebook groups, Facebook posts, and Facebook profiles using this tool?

No, this web scraper only collects Facebook business pages data. You can not use it for posts, profiles, or groups scraping.

Conclusion