This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Jerry Satpathy
When you're building a brand-new agency, there’s one problem you can’t escape:
Finding clients.
Before we had a portfolio, before we had referrals, before anyone even knew our name — we needed a reliable way to identify businesses that might need websites, branding, software, or digital marketing.
At Code Media Labs — my newly formed agency — that responsibility fell on me.
And like many new founders, I turned to the simplest place to find businesses:
Google Maps.
The Struggle Every New Agency Knows
If you've ever done manual prospecting, you know the routine:
Search “Interior Designers near me”
Scroll, scroll, scroll
Click each listing
Copy the name, phone, rating, URL
Paste into a spreadsheet
Repeat 150+ times
It’s slow. It's painful. And it steals hours from the work that actually builds your agency.
One night — after manually extracting yet another list — I said:
“Enough. I’m automating this.”
And that turned into a tool that helped my agency survive its early months.
From Internal Hack → Lead Machine
I opened VS Code and wrote a small Puppeteer script:
Launch Google Maps
Search for a keyword
Scroll automatically
Extract business details
Save everything cleanly
The first version was rough. But it worked.
I could instantly generate lists like:
Cafes in Cuttack
Marketing agencies in Bhubaneswar
Retail shops in Saheed Nagar
Manufacturers across Odisha
For a brand-new agency, this sped up our outreach dramatically.
Instead of spending hours gathering data, I could spend hours pitching and closing.
Why I Decided to Open-Source It
Initially, the scraper was private — a purely internal survival tool.
But the more I talked to other freelancers and small agencies, the more I realised:
“Everyone is struggling with lead generation, especially early on.”
So I cleaned up the tool, added a CLI, refined the output, wrote proper documentation, and published it.
Originally, I wanted to publish it as a scoped package (@cml/google-maps-scraper), but scoped namespaces are paid.
So I renamed it clean and simple:
👉 gmaps-scraper
A free, open-source Google Maps scraping tool for everyone.
NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gmaps-scraper
GitHub: https://github.com/Code-Media-Labs/google-maps-scraper
What the Tool Can Do
🔍 Scrape any Google Maps query
🏪 Extract business details (name, rating, reviews, phone, URL)
🔁 Auto-scroll until all results are loaded
🛡 Automatically deduplicate entries
-
📦 Export results to:
-
results.json -
results.xlsx
-
-
🧰 Use as:
- A CLI command
- A Node.js importable library
For freelancers and new agencies, this is a huge time-saver.
How to Use It
Installation
Global (CLI usage):
npm install -g gmaps-scraper
Local (project usage):
npm install gmaps-scraper
CLI Usage
Search for all interior designers in Bhubaneswar:
gmaps-scraper scrape -q "Interior Designers in Bhubaneswar"
Custom output path:
gmaps-scraper scrape -q "Cafes in Cuttack" -o cafes.json
Headless mode + limited scrolls:
gmaps-scraper scrape -q "Hotels in Puri" --headless -m 50
💻 Library Usage (Node.js)
import { scrapeGoogleMaps } from "@cml/google-maps-scraper";
const results = await scrapeGoogleMaps({
searchQuery: "Cafes in Cuttack",
outputPath: "cafes.json",
maxScrollAttempts: 80,
headless: true,
});
console.log(`Found ${results.length} cafes`);
console.log(results);
Example Output
[ { "name": "Urban Café", "rating": "4.5", "reviews_count": "1,204", "phone": "+91 9876543210", "maps_link": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/..." } ]
Real Talk: Google Maps Can Break Your Selectors
Scraping Google Maps isn't “set-and-forget.”
Google changes:
class names
container structure
layout
nested DOM elements
Your selectors may break.
But fixing them is simple if you know what to look for.
Old selector:
const name = await element.$eval('.business-name', el => el.textContent);
Updated selector:
const name = await element.$eval('.place-title span', el => el.textContent);
Whenever Google makes a UI update, just inspect again and adjust your selectors.
Who Should Use This?
This tool is built for anyone who needs structured business data from Google Maps — especially if you’re trying to grow or automate your workflow. You’ll benefit from this scraper if you are:
A new agency looking for qualified leads quickly
A freelancer who wants to find clients without spending hours searching manually
A marketer needing business lists for outreach, campaigns, or segmentation
A founder validating a market or researching local competitors
An SEO specialist creating or updating business directories
A developer building automation tools, dashboards, or datasets
A data analyst collecting local business information for insights
If you’re early in your journey and want to save time, remove repetitive work, and scale your lead generation, this tool gives you a massive head start.
What's Coming Next
I’m actively adding:
Address, website, and business hours extraction
Anti-detection and rate-limiting features
Region/language support
Cleaner error handling
CSV and CRM-friendly output formats
If you want to contribute, PRs are welcome!
Final Thoughts
When you're building a new agency, every hour counts.
This tool saved me countless hours of lead generation — and helped bring in our earliest clients.
That’s why I open-sourced it.
If it helps someone else who’s just starting, it’s worth it.
If you’ve built an internal tool that saved you time… consider open-sourcing it. You might help someone who’s exactly where you were.
And as always, Happy Coding 🧑🏻💻
Built with ❤️ by Code Media Labs
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Jerry Satpathy
Jerry Satpathy | Sciencx (2025-11-14T06:19:13+00:00) How I Built a Google Maps Scraper to Generate Leads for My New Agency (And Why I Open-Sourced It). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/11/14/how-i-built-a-google-maps-scraper-to-generate-leads-for-my-new-agency-and-why-i-open-sourced-it/
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