Pull your first 120 companies from Google Maps

1. 1

   Start a new research project

   From the dashboard, click New Research. Name the project after the market and the date, not after the client. You will build several versions of this list and you want to tell them apart later.

   

2. 2

   Select Google Maps as your source

   Choose Google Maps from the data source options. If you are unsure whether your market has a physical presence, this is the cheapest way to find out.

3. 3

   Describe the business in plain words

   The field asks what business you want to extract. Write it the way you would say it out loud, category then place. Plain phrasing beats clever phrasing: write "bookshops in Japan", not "search for bookshops in Japan".

4. 4

   One location per search, then merge

   This is the rule the panel states and almost everyone breaks. If you put several locations in one search, only the first is really prioritised. Cover a country city by city with separate searches and merge them afterwards, which course 2.3 shows you how to do.

5. 5

   Set the count in multiples of twenty

   The minimum is 20 and only multiples of 20 are accepted, so 20, 40, 60, 120 and so on. Ask for roughly three times the number of companies you want to end up with, because you are about to cut this list hard. For a 40 row target, ask for 120.

   

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   5

   1. 1The price, on the builder itself. Sourcing is the cheapest step in the whole loop.
   2. 2What business do you want to extract. Category and place, in plain words.
   3. 3How many. This is the number that decides whether your filter later has anything to cut.
   4. 4The rule the field does not spell out until you break it: minimum twenty, multiples of twenty only.
   5. 5Best practices, from the product itself: one location at a time, city by city, plain phrasing.

6. 6

   Extract, and watch the table fill

   Click Extract. Rows populate in real time. Each one arrives with business name, address, phone number, website, rating, review count, category and opening hours.

7. 7

   Then run it again, differently

   Two more searches, and neither is a repeat. One with a different category phrasing, because solar installers and solar panel companies return overlapping but different sets. One for the next city. Merging them is course 2.3.

What good output looks like

Look at row three. No website and nine reviews. That row will fail the filter in the next lesson, and because you have not enriched anything yet, cutting it costs you nothing and saves you the five credits it would otherwise have consumed.