Introduction

YouTube Comment Scraper is a powerful tool designed to extract valuable data from YouTube video comments. With this scraper, you can effortlessly gather information such as comment content, author details, reply count, like count, and voting status. Additionally, you can choose to include replies to each comment.

Key Features

• Extract YouTube video comments with ease.
• Retrieve essential comment details, including author information, reply count, and likes.
• Option to include all replies to each comment.
• Configurable to limit the maximum number of comments to scrape.

Typical Use Cases

• Audience Engagement Analysis: Analyze the engagement and sentiment of comments on a specific YouTube video.
• Content Improvement: Gain insights from user feedback to enhance video content.
• Competitor Analysis: Monitor and analyze comments on competitors' videos.

Inputs

Data Input

The scraper takes the following inputs:

• Start URLs: The URLs of the YouTube videos for which you want to scrape comments.
• Maximum Comment Count: The maximum number of comments to scrape for each video.

Input Example

1{
2    "startUrls": [
3        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySA7mSgF54I"
4    ],
5    "maxCommentCount": 30,
6}

Outputs

The scraper produces the following output for each comment:

• Channel ID: The unique ID of the YouTube channel.
• Channel URL: The URL of the YouTube channel.
• Video Title: The title of the YouTube video.
• Comment Author: The username of the comment author.
• Author's Channel: The URL of the author's YouTube channel.
• Author's Thumbnail: The URL of the author's profile thumbnail.
• Comment Content: The content of the comment.
• Reply Count: The number of replies to the comment.
• Comment ID: The unique ID of the comment.
• Comment Like Count: The number of likes on the comment.
• Comment Vote Status: The voting status of the comment (e.g., UPVOTE, DOWNVOTE, INDIFFERENT).
• Time Posted: The time when the comment was posted.

Output Example

1{
2	"channel_id": "UCfYpNHgjytKsTYy-CQ8N5Dg",
3	"channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/c/EvanCarmichael",
4	"title": "How to Develop a MINDSET That Can DEFEAT ANYTHING! | Myles Munroe MOTIVATION",
5	"author": "@positivelyliving992",
6	"authors_channel": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW45uEAphck-JgMWWXzn_1w",
7	"authors_thumbnail": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIf8zZT3jbvlm2jvhOesIeJPGS8coo5HBezdNP9EHT8M=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
8	"comment": "Poor people pursue money, Rich people pursue things and wealthy people pursue ideas. I absolutely love it! Great video",
9	"replies": "41",
10	"comment_id": "Ugj19Rf7y2AkXHgCoAEC",
11	"comment_like": "1K",
12	"comment_voteStatus": "INDIFFERENT",
13	"time_posted": "7 years ago"
14}

Usage

How to Run the Scraper

1. Go to Apify and log in or create an account if you don't have one.
2. Create a new task and select the "YouTube Comment Scraper" scraper.
3. Configure the scraper's input settings by providing the YouTube video URLs and specifying the maximum number of comments to scrape.
4. (Optional) Set the "Include All Replies" input according to your preference.
5. Start the task and wait for it to complete.
6. Once the task is finished, you can access the scraped data in the task's dataset.

How to Interpret the Scraper's Results

The scraper will provide you with a JSON dataset containing the scraped YouTube video comments data. Each comment will have its own set of properties, as described in the "Outputs" section.

Examples

Example 1: Scraping Comments with Replies

In this example, we will scrape comments from a YouTube video, including all replies to each comment.

1{
2    "startUrls": [
3        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example_video_id"
4    ],
5    "maxCommentCount": 30,
6    "allReplies": true
7}

Example 2: Scraping Comments Without Replies

In this example, we will scrape comments from a YouTube video, excluding replies.

1{
2    "startUrls": [
3        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example_video_id"
4    ],
5    "maxCommentCount": 30,
6    "allReplies": false
7}

Troubleshooting

Common Problems and Solutions

Problem: The scraper is not returning any data.

Solution:

Ensure that the provided video URLs are correct, and the videos have comments available.

Problem: Rate limiting issues.

Solution:

If you encounter rate limiting issues, try adjusting the scraping speed or contact Apify support for assistance.

Additional Information

Links to Related Resources

• Apify
• Apify Documentation

Acknowledgements

This scraper is powered by Apify, a leading web scraping and automation platform. Special thanks to the Apify team for their contributions.