Remember that time back in 2019 when people tried to storm Area 51? Ever since the 1950s, the intense secrecy surrounding Area 51 has made people want to see what's really there. How about checking it out on Google Maps from the comfort of your laptop instead of storming the place? When we say the Apify platform can scrape anything, we mean anything! Even Area 51 Google Maps coordinates. To that end, we will be using one of our all-time favorites, dare we say classic tools - Google Maps Scraper - to see what data we can extract. And warning: it's free to try out! Just don't tell the Secret Service 🤫
How to scrape Google Maps by only using the coordinates
Now we've got the history bit out of the way, it's time to show you how to extract your Google Maps data by coordinates ⬇️
Step 1. Go to Google Maps Scraper
All of our tools can be found in Apify Store. Apify Store is a lot like Apple Store - a place to browse and find tools that you need. There you can find 1,000+ scraping and automation tools, all free to try out. Now put 'maps' in the search bar, and our Google Maps-related scrapers will show up. Pick the Google Maps Scraper (since it's the most powerful one) and click Try for free to join almost 20,000 other Google Maps Scraper users.
To give any of our data extraction tools a go, you will need an Apify account first. Signing up is simple - type in your email address or a GitHub account, and make up a strong password. No credit card is required for a free trial; just an email is enough.
Step 2. Find the Area 51 coordinates
The easiest way to scrape Area 51 on Google Maps is to use its coordinates. Of course, we must keep our expectations of the resulting data low. But it's fun to try it out; let's see what we can get. So, find the Area 51 coordinates (we're using the ones from Wikipedia) and get ready to... copy them.
Just to be sure, let's also use the Google Maps URL for Area 51. To do that, we'll head over to Google Maps, search Area 51, and use the URL we'd receive. We'll be copying that one too.
Step 3. Insert the coordinates of Area 51 to scrape it
Now that you're in Apify Console (your web scraping workspace), there are two things left to do. Scroll down a bit and paste the coordinates in the respective fields. You can safely ignore all the fields above the ones we need.
Now copy-paste that endless URL from Google Maps and insert it into a slightly lower field. Let's hit the Save&Start button and wait for the results. Will there be aliens...🛸
Step 4. Take a look at the extracted data
Yup, that's a bit underwhelming. But the data we've received is exactly the one shown for Area 51 on Google Maps, so it's correct. Congrats on scraping Area 51!
Step 5. Choose some other place to scrape
The second good thing about Google Maps Scraper (other than being free to try and play around with for unsophisticated little projects like this one) is that you can use longitude-latitude parameters to scrape data on any other area on Earth. Let's pick a Nevada city nearby, Reno, and find its coordinates.
Step 6. Scrape data by search term and location
Let's make it a little bit more fun and complex and add scraping casinos specifically. You can do that in the top fields. How many casinos do you think we'll get? Let's aim for 60 and not forget to indicate the Country and City parameters. Now last thing: copy-paste the Reno coordinates and hit Save&Start.
Step 7. Collect your Google Maps data
While our data extraction tool is running, you'll see raw data show up as it starts coming in, but the scraping hasn't finished until the status changes to Succeeded. In under 9 minutes, we've collected Google Maps data on 10 casinos in Reno, Nevada, using its 2 coordinates and 1 URL.
Step 8. View and download your data
Once the data extraction has been completed, you can click on the Storage tab > Export button to preview and download your data.
You can start scraping any area by knowing its coordinates (or postal address) right here 👇 Now, go on, try it out for your city or town, and see what you can get!
Want to scrape Google Maps differently?
Google Maps is an incredibly complicated website right now. It contains data on location, contacts, reviews and sentiment, popularity, prices, menus, hours of service, and much more. And it's getting increasingly complex as time and developments go on. All that data can be scraped and used for data projects. You can play around with our lightweight Google Maps scrapers and try scraping different features of Google Maps, e.g., images, gas prices, reviews, or popular times.
