Scrape Yelp Reviews and Business Data (Node.js Tutorial)

#webdev #javascript #api #tutorial

Yelp has millions of business listings with reviews, ratings, and contact info. Here's how to extract them.

Yelp Fusion API (Official — Free)

Yelp provides a free API with 5,000 calls/day:

const API_KEY = 'your-yelp-api-key';

async function searchYelp(term, location) {
  const url = `https://api.yelp.com/v3/businesses/search?term=${encodeURIComponent(term)}&location=${encodeURIComponent(location)}&limit=50`;
  const res = await fetch(url, {
    headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${API_KEY}` }
  });
  const data = await res.json();
  return data.businesses.map(b => ({
    name: b.name,
    rating: b.rating,
    reviewCount: b.review_count,
    address: b.location.display_address.join(', '),
    phone: b.display_phone,
    categories: b.categories.map(c => c.title).join(', '),
    url: b.url
  }));
}

const restaurants = await searchYelp('pizza', 'New York');
console.table(restaurants);

Get Reviews

async function getReviews(businessId) {
  const url = `https://api.yelp.com/v3/businesses/${businessId}/reviews?limit=3&sort_by=yelp_sort`;
  const res = await fetch(url, {
    headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${API_KEY}` }
  });
  const data = await res.json();
  return data.reviews.map(r => ({
    rating: r.rating,
    text: r.text,
    date: r.time_created,
    user: r.user.name
  }));
}

API Limits

Free tier: 5,000 API calls/day
Returns up to 50 results per search
Reviews endpoint returns up to 3 reviews per business
For more reviews, need HTML scraping (with proper delays)

Use Cases

Competitor analysis — compare ratings across businesses
Location research — find business density in an area
Review sentiment — what do customers complain about?
Lead generation — find businesses in a specific category
Market entry — research local competition before opening

Resources

Need Yelp or Google Maps data extracted? $20 flat rate. Email: Spinov001@gmail.com | Hire me

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