![]() Latitude - Latitude of the point at the centre of your search radius.Keyword - the keyword you want to search by.To save you time, two functions are now available in the Code library - placeSearch() and placeDetails(). However, wrapping the API up in a Google Sheets function allows us to access the API directly with exactly the same functionality. In API form, the Places API can be inaccessible to anyone without a developer background. Place Details Results Using the Google Places API in Google Sheets Using the two together give us a powerful tool for extracting businesses in a local area that meet our search criteria. This means for each result of our Place Search, we run one Place Detail request. Using Place Details google can provide us further information about the business, like website, address, business hours, reviews, etc for a single business. Place Searches return Place ID's, which we use as input for a Place Details search. If we want more information about the business such as their website, telephone number or opening hours, we'll need to use tool number 2 - Place Details. When we make a Place Search, we get back a list of businesses with an overview of their details, such as name, location and their Place ID. A full list of place types are available here. If a Place Type is supported for the type of business we're targeting, we can ensure our search only returns leads in our target market. We're also able to filter our results using a Place Type, which is a set of business types such as restaurant, hairdresser or gym. We can use a text search term, like “Harry’s Diner” or search using a telephone number. The Places API provides lots of useful tools, but we're focused on two of them Īs the name suggests, Place Search allows us to search for businesses in a given area, with Google providing a list of suggestions based on our search query. Any business you can find as a result of running a search in Google Maps you can find using the Places API, so it's worth thinking of the Places API as the backend behind Google Maps, just minus the map interface. It works just like Google Maps in your browser, in that you can search within a certain radius for businesses around any point on a map. What is the Places API For?Īs a quick introduction to the Google Places API, Google provides this service for other software vendors that want to display nearby businesses in their software or app. In this article, we'll step through how to get set up with a Google Places account and how to begin using these functions right away. As far as familiarity goes, Google Sheets and its ability to write custom functions serves as the perfect playground for the Places API, provided we can build a custom function to handle everything for us. What we need is a system that makes the Places API data more accessible and allows us to deliver the information in a form that we're familiar with. It's time to change that and build a nicer interface for the Places API.Īs accessible as a Google Sheets function. The only downside is that for most of us, API's can be difficult to understand and use. Google does however provide an API - The Google Places API, which we can tap in to source this information. Like other tech giants, Google actively blocks web scraping platforms from access its products. ![]() One of the reasons Google Maps is often overlooked is it is not entirely straightforward how to extract data from it in a useful way. As a lead source, Google Maps is probably one of the most overlooked sources of business information for this purpose and given the sheer volume of data it holds, one that you should add to your toolbox today. Even better, one that provides contact details and other indicators to help you filter them. If you're searching for leads in a local area, it helps to have a vast data source that matches target customers to their location on the map. Whether you service multiple countries or just trade in a single city, being able to find potential customers on a map is a huge asset to building your business. Think of your local CBD, or industrial park. Depending on your target market, your customers may be grouped together more than you think, especially if you're selling B2B. No matter what business you're in, geography is almost always a factor when it comes to finding new customers.
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