Google Earth Location Scraper

A robust Apify Actor that scrapes location data directly from Google Earth.

Features

• Direct Google Earth Scraping: Extracts data from Google Earth's internal Search API.
• Headless Support: Uses Xvfb and SwiftShader to render Google Earth's 3D interface in a headless Docker environment.
• No API Keys Required: Does not require a Google Maps API key.
• Detailed Data: Extracts latitude, longitude, place name, description, and other metadata.

Input

The actor accepts the following input options:

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array	['Eiffel Tower']	List of location names or addresses to search for.
minDelayBetweenRequests	integer	2	Minimum delay (in seconds) between search requests.
maxDelayBetweenRequests	integer	5	Maximum delay (in seconds) between search requests.

Example Input

{
    "searchQueries": [
        "Eiffel Tower",
        "Statue of Liberty",
        "Burj Khalifa"
    ],
    "minDelayBetweenRequests": 2,
    "maxDelayBetweenRequests": 5
}

Output

The actor outputs the scraped data to the default dataset. Each result includes:

• search_query: The query used to find the location.
• place_name: The name of the place found.
• latitude: Latitude coordinate.
• longitude: Longitude coordinate.
• description: Brief description (if available).
• google_place_id: Google's internal place ID.
• url: The Google Earth URL for the location.
• scraped_at: Timestamp of extraction.

Example Output

{
    "search_query": "Eiffel Tower",
    "place_name": "Eiffel Tower",
    "latitude": 48.85837,
    "longitude": 2.294481,
    "description": "Tower in Paris, France",
    "google_place_id": "0x47e66e2964e34e2d:0x8ddca9ee380ef7e0",
    "url": "https://earth.google.com/web/search/Eiffel+Tower/...",
    "data_source": "search_api",
    "scraped_at": "2025-11-28T12:00:00.000000"
}

Technical Details

This scraper runs a headless Chromium browser with Xvfb (Virtual Framebuffer) to support WebGL rendering, which is required for Google Earth to load. It intercepts network traffic to capture the raw data returned by Google's Search API.