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Short answer: You generally should not crawl Yelp’s consumer or business websites to collect ratings or review text. Yelp’s Terms of Service prohibit automated scraping and indexing unless Yelp expressly permits the specific access. A public page, a robots.txt allowance, or a general API key is not a blanket license to build a review corpus. For an application, start with Yelp Fusion; for review text, recurring feeds, metrics, or owner workflows, ask about Yelp’s partner APIs or obtain written authorization for your exact use.
What “scrape Yelp reviews” means in practice
A script that requests Yelp pages, parses ratings or review text, follows pagination, and stores the results is automated retrieval and extraction. Yelp’s Terms of Service (the applicable regional version matters) prohibit using a robot, spider, search or retrieval application, or other automated means to access, retrieve, copy, scrape, or index Service content except where Yelp expressly permits it. The same terms prohibit automated retrieval or indexing that populates a searchable database of business reviews.
That rule applies even when the information is visible without logging in. Yelp’s privacy policy calls reviews and ratings “Public Content,” but public visibility describes who can see a page; it does not grant every developer a republication or bulk-collection right. Yelp may allow particular partners to use public content under separate conditions.
Do not try to evade those restrictions with rotating proxies, browser automation, CAPTCHA-solving, hidden endpoints, or aggressive retrying. This article does not provide bypass instructions. Those techniques can violate the site’s terms and create privacy, security, and account-risk problems.
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Choose an authorized access route
| Route | Who can use it | What it may provide | Questions to settle before coding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yelp Fusion | Self-serve developers, subject to current eligibility and terms | Business discovery and fields such as Yelp ratings; available fields depend on the endpoint | Does the endpoint return the review field you need? What display, attribution, quota, storage, and downstream-use rules apply? |
| Yelp Partner APIs or feeds | Approved partners | Partner capabilities can include review responses, private reviews, business metrics, and regular JSON feeds | Are you eligible? Is your use case covered by the agreement, and what are the feed cadence, geography, retention, and deletion rules? |
| Yelp Dataset Challenge | Researchers who accept the dataset’s current restrictions | A designated research dataset rather than a general-purpose production feed | Do the current license and restrictions permit your analysis, storage, publication, or model training? |
| Written authorization | A project with an agreed scope | Only the fields, volume, locations, and uses explicitly covered | Get the permission in writing, including display, redistribution, retention, deletion, and geographic limits. |
Yelp’s developer documentation distinguishes self-serve Fusion from partner products. Treat that distinction as meaningful: Fusion documentation does not automatically authorize bulk review extraction, indefinite retention, resale, or dataset publication.
Does Yelp Fusion provide review text?
Yelp describes Fusion as exposing local content and user reviews, and its business data includes ratings. That description is not a promise that every business endpoint returns all reviews, every historical review, or unrestricted text. Check the live reference for the exact endpoint, response fields, account type, and permitted use before designing your schema.
For a small application
- Register for the self-serve Fusion access described in Yelp’s developer documentation.
- Select the documented business-search or business-detail endpoint that matches your feature.
- Inspect a real response and confirm whether it contains a rating, review snippets, full text, review identifiers, timestamps, or only links.
- Implement the display and attribution requirements stated for that endpoint. If your product shows a Yelp business, link to the Yelp page when the applicable terms require it.
For review text at scale
Contact Yelp about partner access instead of building a page crawler. Partner documentation describes products for review responses, private reviews, metrics, and regular JSON feeds. Eligibility and contractual limits are use-case specific, so ask about the intended businesses, countries, volume, refresh frequency, storage period, and whether you may expose the text to customers or use it for analytics or model training.
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An approved credential is the beginning of the review, not the end. Use this sequence for any authorized integration.
- Name the source. Record whether the data comes from Fusion, a partner API, a feed, or the Dataset Challenge. Do not mix records from different grants without tracking their separate terms.
- Request the minimum fields. If the feature needs a rating and business identifier, do not collect review text. Narrow requests reduce exposure and make deletion easier.
- Protect credentials. Keep keys on a server-side secret store, restrict access by environment, and never place a credential in browser JavaScript or a public repository. Follow the endpoint’s published authentication and request policies.
- Record provenance. Where permitted, store the source name, business identifier, retrieval time, endpoint, and a version or feed marker. This lets you explain where a value came from without claiming it is a permanent snapshot.
- Enforce lifecycle rules. Build retention, update, and deletion jobs that match the governing terms. A cache is not automatically allowed to become a permanent archive.
- Separate display from analysis. A field you may show in an authorized interface may not be licensed for redistribution, resale, or training a model. Review each downstream use separately.
Interpret ratings and review text carefully
Yelp can moderate user content and change how it is presented. Its terms warn that listings, ratings, and reviews may be incomplete, omitted, reordered, or displayed differently. Yelp also says its recommendation software attempts to showcase the most reliable and useful reviews while displaying others less prominently; the software can suppress legitimate reviews or fail to detect illegitimate ones.
- Label a value as a Yelp-displayed rating, not as an independently verified score.
- Do not infer that an absent review was deleted, fake, or never written. It may simply be outside the response or current display.
- Keep the response timestamp and endpoint context where your agreement allows it.
- Avoid presenting a partial response as the complete review history.
- When terms require attribution or a link, show the Yelp source next to the business information.
Can you use Yelp data in a dataset or app?
Possibly, but only within the permission attached to the exact source. Before collecting, answer these questions in writing:
- Audience: Is the data for internal analysis, a customer-facing app, or a public download?
- Fields: Are ratings, snippets, full text, author details, business metrics, or owner responses included?
- Scale and freshness: What request quota, feed cadence, business count, and historical range are allowed?
- Geography: Which countries, regions, and listings are covered?
- Display and attribution: Must users see a Yelp link, logo, or other notice?
- Retention and deletion: How long may records remain, and how will updates or removals propagate?
- Redistribution: May you provide an export to customers, researchers, or another model?
If any answer is unclear, pause collection and ask Yelp or qualified counsel. Do not treat a generic API credential, a permissive robots.txt line, or the fact that a page is public as an answer to these questions.
Why common scraping approaches fail
“The page is public, so I can copy it.”
Public visibility and automated reuse are different permissions. Yelp’s terms expressly restrict automated access, and its support guidance points users toward authorized sharing, embedding, or approved datasets instead of scraping.
“robots.txt allows my crawler.”
Robots.txt can describe technical preferences, but it is not a contract granting database-building, republication, or model-training rights. Read the applicable terms and API agreement.
“My API key means every review is available.”
An API key authenticates a particular product and account. It does not change what an endpoint returns or expand your contractual rights. Verify fields and use restrictions for each endpoint.
“I will just slow the crawler down.”
Lowering request speed does not turn an unauthorized process into an authorized one. Stop the crawler and move to Fusion, a partner product, the restricted research dataset, or written permission.
“A response changed, so my parser is broken.”
Yelp can omit, reorder, moderate, or display content differently. Treat responses as a platform-selected view, validate fields defensively, and avoid assumptions about completeness.
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ScreenshotNeo is useful when you need an authorized visual record of a page, not a structured Yelp review dataset. It captures a URL as PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF; it does not grant permission to extract or redistribute Yelp text. Use it only for pages and purposes you are allowed to capture.
One GET request returns the screenshot. See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for parameters and response details.
cURL
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://www.yelp.com -o yelp-page.webpPython
import requests
r = requests.get('https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot', params={'access_key': 'YOUR_API_KEY', 'url': 'https://www.yelp.com'}, timeout=90)
r.raise_for_status()
open('yelp-page.webp', 'wb').write(r.content)Node.js
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://www.yelp.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${res.status}`);
const fs = await import('node:fs/promises');
await fs.writeFile('yelp-page.webp', Buffer.from(await res.arrayBuffer()));Before capture, ScreenshotNeo can accept cookie or consent banners and remove more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets; each step can be disabled. Bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing result. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. These features help document an authorized page or test a visual workflow, but they do not bypass Yelp’s access rules or turn an image into licensed review data.
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FAQ
Can I quote one Yelp review manually?
Manual quotation still requires checking Yelp’s current terms, copyright and attribution expectations, and any applicable privacy concerns. “Manual” is not an automatic republication license.
Is the Yelp Dataset Challenge a production API?
No. It is a designated dataset with its own restrictions, so evaluate it as a research-use option rather than assuming it supports live refreshes or a customer-facing service.
Who should approve a high-volume Yelp project?
Ask Yelp about partner eligibility and have your legal or compliance reviewer examine the current regional terms, endpoint agreement, and planned retention and distribution before collection begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I quote one Yelp review manually?
Manual quotation still requires checking Yelp’s current terms, copyright and attribution expectations, and any applicable privacy concerns. “Manual” is not an automatic republication license.
Is the Yelp Dataset Challenge a production API?
No. It is a designated dataset with its own restrictions, so evaluate it as a research-use option rather than assuming it supports live refreshes or a customer-facing service.
Who should approve a high-volume Yelp project?
Ask Yelp about partner eligibility and have your legal or compliance reviewer examine the current regional terms, endpoint agreement, and planned retention and distribution before collection begins.
The Bottom Line
Do not crawl Yelp pages to build a review corpus unless Yelp has expressly authorized the specific access and use. Use Fusion for documented self-serve fields, partner APIs or feeds for approved workflows, and the Dataset Challenge only under its current restrictions.
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