Airbnb Coordinates Scraper Development

This project involved building a Python-based automation script to extract latitude and longitude coordinates from US-based Airbnb listings. The coordinates were embedded inside dynamically loaded Google Maps URLs — only accessible after scrolling and rendering client-side JavaScript content. The client required a solution that works non-locally, preferably in Google Colab, and accurately extracts these geolocation details using Selenium and BeautifulSoup.

Airbnb listing pages do not expose latitude and longitude in static HTML. Instead, the location appears in a dynamically inserted <a> tag once the user scrolls to the map section. The URL looks like this: https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.87287,-78.62445&z=14&t=m&hl=en&gl=US&mapclient=apiv3 The script needed to isolate and extract the ll query parameter containing the coordinates.

Selenium – to automate browser interactions and ensure the dynamic content loads properly

BeautifulSoup – to parse the fully rendered HTML and locate the required anchor tag

Google Colab – for non-local, client-shareable script execution

re (Regex) – for precise coordinate extraction from the URL

Used Selenium WebDriver with headless Chrome to simulate a real browser session.

Programmatically scrolled through the page to ensure all dynamic content was loaded.

Parsed the fully rendered page with BeautifulSoup.

Located the Google Maps anchor tag containing the ll parameter.

Extracted and split the ll value into latitude and longitude using a regular expression.

Output the coordinates cleanly for further use or storage.