Import and Export Data

Tractor is a tool to scrape data from popular platforms.

We built Tractor to make it simple to build datasets from information on Google, Twitter and Facebook Ads. With Tractor you get easy access to relevant data from specific users, communities or search queries ... and it's also really fast.

If you are a Graphext PRO user, you can download Tractor for Windows or Mac here or from inside your Graphext workspace.

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"It turns out that with Twitter data alone, we can go quite some way into figuring out someone's personality."

- Anthony Goldbloom, CEO of Kaggle

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Overview

Using Tractor you can collect new and old data from popular digital platforms. Scraping with Tractor doesn't require any setup or API keys. Sign in to Tractor with your Graphext username and password to start scraping.

Each platform has a set of unique filters to let you scrape data matching a query. Use the help icon next to the platform dropdown list to learn more about creating platform-specific filters. Clicking 'Search' within the Tractor app will start up the scraping process. Once the process has finished you can save your data as a CSV file and then upload it to Graphext to begin analyzing it.

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Installing Tractor

Tractor is a desktop application that you can download on Mac or Windows computers. Download the application from the top menu list in your Graphext workspace.

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How to Install Tractor?

  1. Start from anywhere in your Graphext workspace.
  2. Click the 3 dots from the top menu between your name and the Graphext logo.
  3. Select 'Download Tractor'.
  4. Follow the link to the Graphext website and select 'Download Tractor'.
  5. Save the '.exe' (Windows) or '.dmg' (Mac) file to your computer.
  6. Open the file you have just downloaded.
  7. Follow the instructions to complete the installation. These vary slightly between Mac and Windows computers.
  8. Done ... Open Tractor from your list of applications and start scraping!

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Twitter

Tractor allows you to scrape any kind of data from Twitter. Use the 'search' field to match your results against a specific query. These queries follow the same structure used to find data within Twitter using the Twitter query language.

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How To Scrape Data From Twitter?

  1. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  2. Select 'Twitter' from the platform dropdown menu.
  3. Enter a search query using the Twitter query language.
  4. You can leave any of the other fields blank. Adding additional filters will limit your results to data matching those filters.
  5. Using the 'From' and 'To' fields, specify whether you want to limit your results to tweets to and from specific users.
  6. Using the 'Links to' field, specify whether you want to limit your results to tweets linking to a specific URL.
  7. Using the 'Written in' field, specify whether you want to limit your results to tweets in a particular language.
  8. Using the 'Since' and 'Until' fields, add a date range to limit your results to tweets within that range.
  9. Finally, specify whether you want include 'reply tweets', 'retweets' or 'quote tweets'.
  10. Select 'Search'.
  11. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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Google Search

You can scrape data from Google search results using Tractor. Use the 'search' field to match your results against a specific query. These queries follow the same structure used to find information from Google search using advanced search operators.

The information returned in Google search results scraped with Tractor include the title of webpages, their description and their URL.

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How To Scrape Data From Google Search?

  1. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  2. Select 'Google Search' from the platform dropdown menu.
  3. Enter a search query using Google search operators.
  4. You can leave any of the other fields blank. Adding additional filters will limit your results to data matching those filters.
  5. Using the 'Since' and 'Until' fields, add a date range to limit your results to data within that range.
  6. Enter domains to limit your results to data originating from those domains.
  7. Finally, specify the location you wish to perform the search from.
  8. Select 'Search'.
  9. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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Google News

You can scrape news reports hosted on Google news using Tractor. Use the 'search' field to match your results against a specific query. These queries follow the same structure used to find information from Google search using advanced search operators.

The information returned in Google news results scraped with Tractor include the title of news reports, their description and their URL.

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How To Scrape Data From Google Search?

  1. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  2. Select 'Google Search' from the platform dropdown menu.
  3. Enter a search query using Google search operators.
  4. You can leave any of the other fields blank. Adding additional filters will limit your results to data matching those filters.
  5. Using the 'Since' and 'Until' fields, add a date range to limit your results to data within that range.
  6. Enter domains to limit your results to data originating from those domains.
  7. Finally, specify the location you wish to perform the search from.
  8. Select 'Search'.
  9. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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Google SEO

Scraping information from Google SEO using Tractor returns data on the rankings and pages indexed by google for a certain query. Use the 'search' field to set the query you want to retrieve data on. These queries follow the same structure used to find information from Google search using advanced search operators.

The information returned in Google SEO results scraped with Tractor include the title of pages, their description, their URL and a page ranking.

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How To Scrape Data From Google SEO?

  1. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  2. Select 'Google SEO' from the platform dropdown menu.
  3. Enter a search query using Google search operators.
  4. You can leave any of the other fields blank. Adding additional filters will limit your results to data matching those filters.
  5. Using the 'Written in' field, specify whether you want to limit your results to search results written in a particular language.
  6. Finally, specify the location you wish to perform the search from.
  7. Select 'Search'.
  8. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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Facebook Ads

Tractor also provides functionality to scrape ads promoted by specific Facebook pages. You can search for Facebook Ads here. First, search for a Facebook Ad and then paste the URL of the search results into Tractor to scrape data on all Ads promoted by that page.

Tractor will return the text of an advert, it's creation date and time, money spent on the advert as well as demographic information on who the Ad has been directed at.

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How To Scrape Data From Facebook Ads?

  1. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  2. Select 'Facebook Ads' from the platform dropdown menu.
  3. Search for a page promoting Facebook Ads using the Facebook Ad Library.
  4. Using the 'Search' field, enter the URL of the search results returned by your Facebook Ad Library query.
  5. Select 'Search'.
  6. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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MediaCloud News

The MediaCloud API is an open-source content analysis tool aiming to map news coverage of current events. You can collect data from MediaCloud using Tractor but you will need an API key to do this. You can sign up for a MediaCloud API key here.

Once you have a MediaCloud API key, you can access data on news reports from around the world. To collect specific data from MediaCloud, enter a search term, a country and a date range.

Tractor will return data on news reports including information about the publisher and the article as well as tags provided by MediaCloud.

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How To Scrape Data From MediaCloud?

  1. First, sign up for a MediaCloud API key.
  2. Open the Tractor desktop application.
  3. Select 'MediaCloud News' from the platform dropdown menu.
  4. Enter a search term using the MediaCloud query language.
  5. Using the 'Since' and 'Until' fields, set a date range for your query.
  6. Specify the languages and / or country that you want to return data from.
  7. Enter your API key.
  8. Select 'Search'.
  9. Done ... Watch the data roll in. When the process has finished, upload your CSV to Graphext to start analyzing it.

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Troubleshooting

Problems Logging into Tractor

If you are unable to login to Tractor using your Graphext PRO credentials, then the issue could be related to the saved configuration on your computer's keychain. Resetting the username and password configuration that is saved to your computer should resolve any issues with account login.

You will need to do this inside the keychain settings of your computer (method varies slightly between OS).

Should the issue persist, please get in touch with support@graphext.com.

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How To Resolve Login Issues with Tractor?

  1. Close Tractor.
  2. Navigate to your computer's keychain settings (the space where application login credentials are stored).
  3. Find Tractor in the list of applications.
  4. Right-click and choose 'Delete Tractor'.
  5. This will remove the configuration currently stored here.
  6. Try to login to Tractor again.
  7. That's it. If the problem persists, please get in touch with support@graphext.com.

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Need Something Different?

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Have a look through these topics if you can't see what you are looking for.