Can I scrape historical review data from Trustpilot?

Scraping review data from Trustpilot can be a challenging task for several reasons. Trustpilot's terms of service prohibit unauthorized scraping of their content, which includes historical review data. Violating these terms can result in legal action, revocation of access to their services, or technical countermeasures like IP bans.

However, Trustpilot does offer an API that allows access to review data, although it may be limited and typically requires permission or a paid subscription. To access historical review data in a legitimate way, you should use the Trustpilot API.

Trustpilot API

Trustpilot provides a Business API that you can use to retrieve review data, subject to their terms and conditions. To access this API, you need to register for an API key and comply with their usage limits and guidelines.

Here's a high-level overview of how you might use the Trustpilot API with Python:

import requests

# Replace 'YOUR_API_KEY' with your actual Trustpilot API key
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
business_unit_id = 'BUSINESS_UNIT_ID' # The unique identifier for the business on Trustpilot

# Define the endpoint URL for retrieving reviews
url = f'https://api.trustpilot.com/v1/business-units/{business_unit_id}/reviews'

# Set up the headers with your API key
headers = {
    'Authorization': f'Bearer {api_key}'
}

# Make the request to the Trustpilot API
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

# Check the response status and process the data
if response.status_code == 200:
    reviews = response.json()
    # Process the reviews as needed
    for review in reviews['reviews']:
        print(review['title'], review['text'])
else:
    print(f'Failed to retrieve reviews: {response.status_code}')

In the code above, you would need to replace 'YOUR_API_KEY' with the API key you obtained from Trustpilot and 'BUSINESS_UNIT_ID' with the actual ID of the business whose reviews you're interested in.

Remember that the free access to the Trustpilot API might be limited in terms of features and the number of requests you can make. For comprehensive access to review data, you may need to contact Trustpilot and inquire about their paid API services.

Web Scraping Considerations

If you were to scrape web pages without using the official API, you would have to consider the following:

• Legality: As mentioned, scraping Trustpilot without authorization violates their terms of service. Always review the terms and conditions of the site and respect their rules.
• Robots.txt: Check the robots.txt file of Trustpilot to see which parts of the site you are allowed to crawl, if any.
• Rate Limiting: Sending too many requests in a short period can lead to your IP being blocked.
• Dynamic Content: Reviews on Trustpilot may be loaded dynamically with JavaScript, so simple HTTP requests may not be sufficient to retrieve the content. You might need tools like Selenium or Puppeteer to render JavaScript if you were scraping.

Conclusion

While technically it might be possible to scrape historical review data from Trustpilot, doing so without permission would be against Trustpilot's terms of use and could carry legal risks. The recommended and legitimate way to access Trustpilot review data is through their official API, which provides a structured way to access the data you need while respecting the platform's rules.