In 17 years, Google Maps has evolved from a simple navigation app to a platform with various opportunities to promote businesses and attract customers.
1,164,749 companies use Google Maps. A pretty impressive number, isn’t it? And for all of these businesses, from e-commerce to pharmaceuticals, it’s crucial to be present and updated on Google Maps to expand their customer base. Also, every organization wants its name at the top of the list. To achieve this goal, it publishes tons of data on Google Maps.
To access all that information in one place or to benchmark, you must compile that data into a document. Copying such a vast amount of content manually can take ages. Click To TweetAnd that’s where web scraping comes in, which gathers all the information and presents it neatly in a spreadsheet.
Why is Google Maps the Right Place to Extract Data?
Google Maps is an important tool that millions of people worldwide every day turn to for information about restaurants, stores, various service providers, institutions, and other places via smartphones and computers. In addition, Google Maps is a valuable place to search and build a B2B database of all registered businesses.
Therefore, businesses and individuals would like to receive Google Maps data. After all, in addition to finding places, the tool is helpful for businesses and marketers.
Using Google Maps scraping will:
- establish your business as a trusted source in the industry, especially in niche areas;
- increase productivity by automating the entire search process;
- gather valuable data on competitor businesses, including phone numbers, websites, hours of operation, customer ratings, addresses, and more;
- expand your online presence;
- better rank both locally and globally;
- interact with peers and get real-time updates about your industry;
- cover local businesses to find the ideal customer profile quickly;
- see more local customers and get the attention of old ones.
Is it Legal to Scrape Google Maps?
Scraping data from Google Maps is excellent for B2B business and marketing growth. But there are some basic rules to follow before collecting information.
Of course, anyone can get publicly available information, whereas web scraping is a faster and more efficient way to get the job done.
In general, scraping from Google Maps is legal if the data being scraped is publicly available.
Illegal Google Maps scraping includes:
- scraping of copyrighted data;
- scraping confidential data that requires authorization.
You should also read the Google Maps Terms of Use before scraping information.
Benefits Of Google Maps Scraping
There are different approaches to collecting Google Maps data. The approach that works best for you will depend on your needs, resources, and goals. For example, if you have coding skills, you can create your scraping tool. But if you don’t have coding skills and don’t want to spend a lot of time learning, this approach won’t work for you.
If you need to scrape a bunch of information from Google Maps constantly, you can use off-the-shelf web scraping tools. Some of these tools are paid, while others are available for free. However, free tools do not provide quality and accurate results compared to their paid counterparts.
As a reliable way to collect data, with web scraping, you can search for businesses by specific keywords, in a particular area, or by a clear line of business. These are some significant benefits provided to companies collecting Google Maps data with web scraping API.
Speed & Accuracy
It takes much longer manually find places of interest in a given area. It is faster and more practical to use web scraping to provide a list with sorted, accurate Google Maps data.
Easy to Use
Of course, numerous complicated programs take up a lot of effort and time. To use such programs, you must learn them and then get to work. Web scraping is easy to use and apply, providing a lot of data instantly.
Operational Benefits
Most web scraping tools have a test period in which you can try them out before you buy. Sometimes, you can extract data from thousands of pages before you pay money.
Collecting a Wide Range of Data
Using a quality web scraping tool, there are virtually no restrictions on the type and amount of content you can collect from Google Maps. You can quickly and accurately gather professional business names, addresses, websites, reviews, hours of operation, locations, and more.
How to Use Data Extracted from Google Maps
86% of people look up a business location on Google Maps before visiting it. So, it’s fair to say that without a presence on Google Maps, it can be very difficult for local businesses to showcase themselves to others and grow online. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is using Google Maps results to automate contact data extraction, such as phone numbers, email addresses, websites, etc.
And how else can you use the collected data? Here are some examples:
Finding New Customers
Google Maps can give you a rich base of potential customers to contact and offer your products or services. With complete information about a business, including its contact information and website, you can make connections, develop and augment your database, and always keep in touch with local businesses.
Connecting Customers with Businesses
Google Maps scraping can work in reverse as well. The data collected can create handy lists that allow consumers to filter or search for the right service provider in a particular location.
Build a Database of Potential Customers
Collecting B2B contact data allows you to create spreadsheets and lists to analyze companies offering similar services or products to yours and compare offers, prices, promotions, and more. Then, you can create more advanced business solutions based on the results.
Collect Sentiment Feedback
This way, you can track how customers respond to your business, consider their wishes and interests, and improve your products or services. You’ll also be able to deal with fake reviews that your competitors or detractors may leave.
Data-driven Marketing
Scraping competitor data and reviews from Google Maps can be useful for your business. With the information you collect, you can identify both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors in relation to your business, analyze sentiment and thereby be able to create enhanced marketing campaigns.
And don’t forget that you can benefit from big data, even if you are a small player. Above all, it’s a great opportunity to expand your organization and develop a working market strategy.
Conclusion
Google Maps is a goldmine of information with plenty of business leaders and top enterprises looking to grow their companies. It’s a great platform to connect with like-minded people in your business niche.
Timely analysis of the information you gather will help you understand your competitors, anticipate customer needs, make the best offer, and build your business in the most comfortable location. And thanks to web scraping, you can get the necessary content even faster and more frequently without involving third parties or incurring additional costs.