What are the Tips and Tricks for Scraping TikTok Data?
TikTok exploded in the first quarter of 2020 and it was already the most downloaded app in the world. According to the results of February 2021, there were 2 billion downloads all over the world with 100 million active users. It’s no surprise that TikTok collects and uses data as a social media site. As a result, it raises worries regarding data security.
About TikTok Data
When a user downloads the app on their device, they provide permission to access data on it, which includes the user’s likes and dislikes, friends and pastimes, locations, life patterns, and consumer behavior details.
On the one hand, the US government is concerned that TikTok’s parent firm is based in China and does not follow American privacy rules. Users, on the other hand, are occasionally concerned that they are being watched. We would say no more than Facebook or Google.
Still, there are differences. The users can only watch the videos on TikTok without registering, but while creating the account they will need to provide their details, age, email address, and contact details.
Furthermore, TikTok gathers information from third-party social network providers, as well as technical and behavioral data on its users, as well as the content of their messages and phone book information. It just goes to show how far TikTok goes with user data mining. It can gather up to 50 different types of information from users aged 13 and up.
Why Scrape TikTok Data?
TikTok is a great resource of information and commercial possibilities. Based on the data obtained from such a social network, a skilled digital marketer can construct an effective growth hack or marketing plan for hot lead generation and business development.
Marketing research and influencer marketing are two of the most common uses of TikTok social intelligence.
Even though many of TikTok’s trending videos are meme-focused, “normal people” also probably have spent a significant amount of time on the platform discussing interesting experiences and important issues such as school/university life, ongoing development, diseases they live with, employment struggles, and much more.
As a result, there are several market research opportunities in this industry, allowing us to examine and better understand the customer journey for a wide range of products and services.
We can also use TikTok data mining and analysis to find key influencers on important themes, which may be highly useful for many brands (make-up and clothing being the leading ones). TikTok has the potential to become a golden opportunity for the food and beverage, apparel, pet care, and lifestyle businesses. Higher education could also efficiently detect and spread educational trends by identifying student TikTok influencers in numerous domains.
The trend of consumer comprehension is really valuable. At present, that’s TikTok, therefore scraping it is a great way to learn more about it.
Scraped Data Fields for TikTok Data Mining
As previously stated, TikTok may collect roughly 50 different types of information from a user. You may estimate video views, account followers/following growth, engagement rate, and more using TikTok analysis.
The following field can be scraped when it comes to TikTok data mining:
How to Use Python to Scrape TikTok Posts and Extract Comments?
TikTok Official API
TikTok has only one HTTP endpoint, which it makes available to developers. It enables users to obtain the embedded code for various videos. Visit TikTok’s Developers page to get access to this official API and instructions on how to embed it. However, because the API is limited, it’s advisable to explore alternatives to research TikTok posts and comments.
Unofficial APIs may become one of these alternatives because they allow consumers to access more data and have fewer restrictions.
Rapid API’s TikTok API
RapidAPI’s TikTok API is among the most prominent TikTok API solutions, enabling you to scrape current and latest music pages, extract user details and hashtag data, retrieve user followers, and more.
Python
Python can extract a lot of information from TikTok, such as video height and width, video descriptions, author nicknames, play addresses, video length, and so on.
Flask
Python will be useful for scraping the TikTok API, but Flask will just be required. It’s a simple-to-install microframework for web development, with Python being used to put up web apps. Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed it.
Selenium
Because TikTok is built on JavaScript, Selenium is required for effective TikTok scraping. Selenium first opens the browser, then navigates to the desired URL, waits for the JavaScript to load, then fetches and returns the HTML.
It’s critical to keep track of Selenium requests, and the retries variable, which displays the number of failed requests, might help you do so.
Its common knowledge that running selenium can assist lessen the burden on the local machine’s CPU. It does, however, increase the likelihood of being noticed and flagged by TikTok’s administrators. So be cautious.
Flask
Those two packages are also required for scraping TikTok using Python. BeautifulSoup makes HTML parsing a user-friendly procedure, while Requests generates distinct sorts of HTML in your algorithm.
Requests and BeautifulSoup
Python will be useful for scraping the TikTok API, but Flask will just be required. It’s a simple-to-install microframework for web development, with Python being used to put up web apps. Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed it.
Use of Proxies
When utilizing proxies, choose one that enables you to whitelist your local IP address. Request a unique residential proxy that doesn’t require usernames or passwords to use; this will keep you safe from TikTok’s anti-bot system.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is acceptable while scraping TikTok with Python. You can use it to see how a user’s account is seen on the site, whether it’s negative, favorable, or neutral. This technique aids in anticipating and avoiding specific public relations concerns, among other things.
Data Cleaning
After the data has been scraped and the TikTok dataset has been created, it is critical to clean it up and remove any extraneous features that could influence the study results. Links, slang terms, and other elements that you do not require can be found here.
Off-The-Shelf Proxy Solutions for TikTok Data Scraping
Scraper API
It’s a proxy service designed to make scraping public data easier. All you have to do now is tell your crawlers to use the Scraper API to issue a letter. You will receive an HTML answer containing the accurate TikTok data you require.
Scraper API is ideal for extracting massive amounts of data from TikTok, whether it’s video material or themes. It is, however, unable to collect profile information from behind the login.
Scraper API is the most cost-effective choice because it allows you to scrape up to a thousand TikTok profiles for free every month. However, there are four premium packages available for more involved projects.
SmartProxy
SmartProxy is a leading supplier of residential proxies that may be used with a variety of automation systems. Proxies are available from around 200 different sites. It’s compatible with the vast majority of social media tools and bots, making it great for growth hackers and marketing automation.
Unfortunately, there is no free alternative, and the least paid package for 5 GB costs $75 per month.
OxyLabs
OxyLabs is a major participant in the residential proxy market, making it a good choice for social media scraping and automation, particularly on TikTok.
The organization provides a diverse choice of residential proxies from around 40 different locations throughout the world. Residential IPs, paired with automation tools and bots, are still required for social media scraping.
The disadvantage of this approach is that it is costly if you need scraping on a large scale.
HighProxies
It’s a great alternative for individuals on a small budget or who are just getting started with scraping social media. Their social media proxies are cheap, but the quality and reliability are inconsistent. As a result, HighProxies are ineffective for scraping social media sites on a large scale.
TikTok Data Use Cases
If you just want to scrape some information from TikTok yourself with some coding, check out the samples below. They are relatively general, but they are useful in a several situations. If you’re going to make tens of requests in a short period, it’s best to use a proxy.
Furthermore, timestamps would be a wonderful addition to the statistics for tracking popularity over time.
Extracting Videos by A Certain User
David Teather’s TikTok-API is a great way to scrape clips from a single user. Install TikTok API with pip3 to receive the most up-to-date package. Take, for example, the Washington Post account on TikTok and do the following in Python:
A hundred video pairs are listed in the user videos object. However, you will most likely only require a few specific statistics. It may be extracted from the entire lexicon in the following manner:
The output will be as follows:
Fetch the Videos Liked by A Particular individual
It’s not difficult to extract a user’s favorite videos if they’re of particular interest to you. Let’s look at how the official TikTok account works.
We use the following code to collect the videos it has recently liked:
The output will look like:
Extracting Latest and Trending Videos
If you need to examine today’s trending videos, you can do so in a straightforward manner by following these steps:
The following is the output file for trending videos on a specific date:
Creating a List of Users to Follow
Select the 50 most followed TikTok accounts if you require a large list of individuals to collect videos from (both the ones they publish and the ones they liked). However, if the sample size is insufficient, you can employ suggested users from specific accounts. It will aid in the snowballing of the required user list. Let’s take a look at how we can do it for the four accounts listed below:
TikTok (official account)
washingtonpost (official account)
charlidamelio (the most-followed account)
chunkysdead(a self-proclaimed “cult”)
The code used is the following
Suggested users are:
It’s important to remember that the list of recommendations for some accounts may overlap. It didn’t work for us with washingtonpost and chunkysdead, so don’t expect the same results. Then you can try using the getSuggestedUsersbyIDCrawler function. Your user snowball will continue to grow.
Using tiktok as the seed account, we can quickly generate a list of one hundred accounts using the code below:
The list that appears as a result includes a variety of celebrity accounts, such as:
During its operation, the getSuggestedUsersbyIDCrawler tool expands and finds smaller, more specialist accounts with tens of thousands of followers. It’s advantageous to create a representative dataset.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are numerous pre-built data scraping solutions, proxy servers, and marketing automation technologies available. You can quickly get a competitive advantage over your competitors if you use them wisely.
Scraping social media, on the other hand, is a difficult and time-consuming activity in and of itself. The goal is made considerably more difficult by the TikTok video content and login requirements, especially if you require large-scale analysis.
In this instance, an X-Byte Enterprise Crawling professional team is always available to help you with your responsibilities. All you have to do is contact one of our representatives for a free consultation, discuss your project, business needs, and data requirements, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Originally published at https://www.xbyte.io.
