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Categories: Web scraping, Tutorials

4 Benefits of Scraping Local Business Data

11 mins read Created Date: September 21, 2022   Updated Date: February 22, 2023
Scrape.do’s web scraping tool makes it easy to collect data quickly and easily, whether you’re integrating data into a CRM, building a website, or collecting pricing information. Scrape.do’s web scraping service lets you collect data from any website, including product listings, news articles, real estate listings, and reviews.

Launched a little over fifteen years ago and getting better every day since then, Google Maps not only tells you how to get from point A to point B, but it also has many uses. The most common uses of Google Maps are real-time traffic maps and route planning with cars, in addition to visual content such as satellite images and aerial photos, and you can also map to bicycle, public transport, and pedestrian information thanks to Google Maps. In addition to these, we can say that Google Maps is frequently used to find local businesses and to get more information, especially the scores and prices of local businesses. Scraping Google Maps helps businesses collect and review data from other local businesses.

Imagine that you have moved to a new place and you need to have your hair done, for which you need to find a good hairdresser. The first thing you would do would be to type the keyword “hairdresser” into Google Maps, and then find the business that fits your budget and has the best reviews and reviews at the same time, right? Using the same Google Maps, it is possible to find out when a store, shop, or service can be open. Thanks to the update feature of Google Maps, it becomes possible to learn when opening and closing times change. All this data and valuable customer reviews will be of great help to your business if you combine them properly and store them in a usable format. You can automate and make it easy to get all the data in Google Maps by starting Google Maps scraping.

Scrape.do is a web scraping service that simplifies the process of extracting data from any website. Scrape.do’s web scraping tool makes it easy to collect data quickly and easily, whether you’re integrating data into a CRM, building a website, or collecting pricing information. Scrape.do’s web scraping service lets you collect data from any website, including product listings, news articles, real estate listings, and reviews.

What is Google Maps?

Google Maps is one of the best data listing sources you can get, allowing you to get job opportunities as well as review other businesses. All people looking for a shop, service, or similar place to go to for any purpose examine the data of businesses registered on Google Maps. The data people review includes things like the business name, location, customer reviews and reviews, and prices. In addition, if people want to visit a business, they get the contact data of those businesses from here.

According to recent research, more than two-fifths of people using the internet use Google Maps for global purposes and use the data there. Google Maps has managed to attract about 30 percent of Google searches and has been able to serve billions of users both locally and geographically. It is also known that Google Maps has a market share of 67% worldwide and is the most widely used navigation application in the world.

Considering that Google Maps consists of more than twenty petabytes of data in total, and most of this data consists of millions of small cities in towns and cities, Google Maps is one of the best places to choose for local searches. Almost thirteen percent of searches from Google are about maps, so it’s certainly not surprising that Google Maps has become such a large and constantly growing dataset. When it comes to this dataset and user base that Google Maps has, we can also understand why Google Maps has taken over 67% of the navigation application market.

What Data You Can Get By Scraping Google Maps: The Complete List!

If you want to scrape Google Maps, you may need to consider the data that can be extracted, thanks to this data you can make an extremely effective arrangement. Google Maps, which can be useful for almost any organization, has the information and data that almost any business may need. Whether you’re a laundry service such as a laundromat or looking for a cake shop, the data you can get by scraping Google Maps will be:

  • Business name
  • Business ratings
  • Number of reviews of the business
  • The price range of the business
  • Type of establishment of the business
  • About the business
  • The full address of the business
  • Operation hours of the business
  • Phone number of the business
  • If the business has a website, the address of the business website
  • The most frequent visit times to the business during the day
  • Photos of the business
  • Customer reviews about the business

A business can add all the items we have listed above, or this data may emerge as a result of people updating this data. It is possible that most of the data types we mentioned above are missing if no one has made any updates. Google Maps has a program called Local Guides, which it uses to enable users to take pictures of the places they go and update the information of the places they visit frequently, thanks to this program, the data set in Google Maps is updated in real-time so that businesses that want to access the data and It also becomes possible for real people to access data.

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Even newly opened businesses are frequently listed on Google Maps, especially with new data types added to organizations already on Google Maps, making it possible for everyone to know about a business. It is possible and very easy to get business listings and other posts about businesses if you want by scraping Google Maps. Although some information will change from time to time due to reasons such as seasonal changes and natural disasters, businesses, and customers visiting businesses update this business information so that people always have access to accurate information. For example, during COVID, many businesses have become takeaways, so the timings of businesses have been changed or other rules have been introduced to businesses. As a result of many businesses updating this information, people got accurate information about businesses.

What Can You Do Using Local Business Data in Google Maps?

If you manage to use local business data in Google Maps properly and correctly, this data can become extremely valuable to your business and you can get answers to questions that can only be solved with data. Using local business data from Google Maps, you can do things like market research, data collection, sentiment analysis and protecting brand image, competitive analysis.

1. Market Research

Using local business data, it is possible for companies and businesses to conduct market research and find solutions to many problems. For example, if you want to open a shop by making an agreement with a fast-food company, you can find out how many fast-food restaurants are in which part of the city by logging into Google Maps, and in this way, you can choose the right region and set a great location for your business. It is also possible to use this information to understand which areas are densely populated by fast food-loving people. In addition to all of these, it is also possible for you to open a restaurant in whichever region has fewer fast-food restaurants, and to have a higher chance of becoming the best fast-food restaurant in your region.

Data sets, such as people’s ratings, can be used by businesses to understand what types of crowds of people in a location are, how they pay in general, what they don’t like and like, and what they want. It’s always best to use local business data from Google Maps, as you can even indirectly use data from local businesses that aren’t relevant to your business. For example, if you want to open a tour and travel company, but you are not sure what you want in your business, for this, you can review the reviews of other tour and travel companies.

2. Data Collection

When you collect any data format, you have the chance to bring these data groups together, and when you look at these data as a whole, you have a broad picture and perspective on the situation, this also applies to business data. It collects data only for certain types of businesses, helping you solve key issues, missed and unnoticed spots, new business entry coverage, and more.

By using the data you can collect from different businesses on Google Maps, you can easily open doors that only one business’s data cannot open for you, and you can have plenty of information in every field. For example, you have decided to start a hyper-local delivery service and you will start collaborating with the most popular stores and service providers in your area to start this business. For this, you will need to review businesses in advance. You can use data from Google Maps to rank these businesses based on their ratings and customer reviews. Using this data, you can make your choices more accurately and list the businesses you have chosen in order of importance.

3. Sentiment Analysis and Protecting Brand Image

Since the perception of a business today is as important as the products it sells or the services it offers, businesses should also attach great importance to protecting their brand image. If you want to know what kind of brand image any business has, it will be enough to review the latest reviews on different platforms, this data will provide you with valuable information about the brand image of the business you want.

Thanks to the local business data in Google Maps, it is possible to access thousands of reviews of millions of businesses and have information about the brand image of these businesses. You can also access great data through these reviews and reviews. With the data you have obtained, you can both perform sentiment analysis and easily learn what businesses do right and what they do wrong. Scraping Google Maps is the fastest and easiest way to get all the local business data you need.

Although you can analyze specific customer reviews one by one, you will not be able to manually review thousands of reviews. By getting a web scraping software for this, you can sort the customer reviews of this software according to whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. In this way, it will be possible to use the data you obtain from Google Maps again and again.

4. Competitive Analysis

By gaining insight into competing businesses, you can put your business in a better position, and getting the right competitive analysis is just as important as offering great products and services. That’s why almost all companies want to collect data from similar businesses on a regular basis. It is possible to reach all the data you want to obtain via Google Maps. You will also be able to use all this data for purposes such as creating pricing strategies, planning opening and closing timings, providing additional services, and examining customer perception. By using all this information, you can both improve and make data-based business decisions easily.

How to Get Google Maps Data: Top 2 Ways

Although there are many ways to get information and data about local businesses through Google Maps, we have listed the two most popular ways, thinking that you will want to get this data quickly. We can describe and list these two ways as follows:

  • Writing Your Own Code: If you actually want to use code to scrape a website like Google Maps and you’re going to write that code yourself, this process can be very difficult for you. This is because the user interface of Google Maps is updated frequently and listings of different types of businesses are listed in different formats, often containing different data and attributes. Also, if you log into more than one map page from the same IP address in a very short time, your IP address may be blacklisted. It is extremely difficult and expensive to build a customized web scraping solution to read information from local businesses located in different locations and update this information in real-time. It will also bring with it the overhead of infrastructure installation and maintenance after creating this software.
  • Paid or Free Software Solutions: People who want to take advantage of this solution method are usually a business team with little coding knowledge, this business team needs web scraping services. Software companies that see these requirements, on the other hand, provide web scraping services, meeting the requirements of the companies.

The Best Web Scraping Service for Scraping Local Business Data

Scrape.do is an affordable web scraping service that allows you to collect the data you need quickly, accurately, and automatically. Scrape.do has been built from the ground up with performance and reliability in mind, so our customers get out-of-the-box solutions without any headaches. Our top-notch customer support team is here for you 24/7 via phone, chat, or email, no matter what time of day it is – or what time it is where you are! All of this at a price that makes web scraping affordable for even the smallest teams or budget-conscious individuals.


Alexander James

Author: Alexander James

Hey, there! As a true data-geek working in the software department, getting real-time data for the companies I work for is really important: It created valuable insight. Using IP rotation, I recreate the competitive power for the brands and companies and get super results. I’m here to share my experiences!