Google Maps Lead Generation: Automate Business Discovery with n8n (Step-by-Step Guide)

🧠 Why this exists

• Finds relevant businesses by query + location
• Resolves official websites (not Google URLs)
• Extracts emails reliably with smart cleaning/validation
• Builds a structured sheet for your CRM or mailer
• Scales safely with delays and error handling

🖊️ Resources Used

• n8n - workflow automation platform
• Google Places API - Free 1,000 requests with any Google Account
• Google Sheets - for housing collected information

🏗️ Architecture Overview

1. Search: Google Places Text Search to get a page of relevant businesses (e.g., "financial advisor Wisconsin").
2. Details + Website: Places Details API per business to get the official website + phone + Maps URL.
3. Scrape: HTTP GET against each website with a sane User-Agent and a short Wait between requests.
4. Extract + Clean: Regex to find emails, decode HTML, normalize, and split to single-row items.
5. De-dupe + Filter: Remove repeats and drop empty rows.
6. Export: Append to Google Sheets with columns [company, emails, website, address, phone].

🧩 Node-by-Node (exact flow)

1) 🔎 HTTP Request — Google Places Text Search

• Endpoint:
  https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/textsearch/json
• Query: query=YOUR_QUERY (e.g., dentist Minnesota)
• Auth:key=${GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY}
• Output: list of places (place_id, name, formatted_address, …).

2) 🧽 Code — Extract URLs / Normalize Results

• Flattens search response → one item per place.
• De-duplication by place_id in case of overlaps.

3) ♻️ Remove Duplicates — (First Pass)

Compares by address to eliminate near-duplicates.

4) 📦 Split in Batches — Loop Over Items

Prevents spikes, keeps scrape speed safe.

5) 🌐 HTTP Request — Places Details (Website Resolution)

• Endpoint:https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json
• Fields: name, website, formatted_phone_number, url.
• Output: the official business website.

6) 🔗 Merge → 🧮 Code — Normalize Merge

Consolidates search + details into clean JSON:

7) 🌍 HTTP Request — Scrape Site

• GET {{ $json.fetch_url }} with headers (User-Agent, Accept-Language).
• onError: continue ensures workflow never halts.

8) ⏱️ Wait — 1 second

Politeness delay to avoid bans.

9) 🧪 Code — Extract Emails + Company (from <title>)

Regex for emails:

Extract <title> for company name, decode HTML entities.

10) 🧹 Remove Duplicates — (Second Pass)

De-dupes on emails list.

11) 🧰 Code — Split/Validate Emails

Cleans & validates each email:

12) 🚰 Filter — Drop Null Emails

Keeps only rows with actual emails.

13) 📤 Google Sheets — Append

Maps fields to columns:

• email
• company
• website
• address
• phone

🗺️Steps 1-3

🗺️Steps 4-7

🗺️Steps 8-11

🗺️Steps 12-15

🔄 Replicability Across Industries

• Real Estate 🏠: Scrape agents or property managers in a given city.
• Law Firms ⚖️: Pull contact info for attorneys in specific practice areas.
• Marketing Agencies 📈: Find local businesses in target niches like restaurants, gyms, or salons.
• Consultants 💼: Identify businesses in need of your services by geography + industry keywords.

🛠️ Configuration Notes

• Queries: Adjust by niche + geography.
• API Keys: Store safely in n8n creds/env.
• Delays: 1–2s between requests; increase if 429s appear.
• Headers: Realistic User-Agent.
• Error Tolerance: Keep onError: continue for resilience.

🧪 Email Extraction: Making It Robust

• ✅ Validation: regex + MX check if needed
• 🧼 Sanitization: remove junk characters and URL fragments
• 🔁 De-dupe: Sets for local & global uniqueness
• 🧾 Company Name: from <title> tag, decode entities

📈 Scaling & Ops

• Pagination: Handle next_page_token from Google API.
• Concurrency: Low + steady beats bans.
• Retries: Add exponential backoff if needed.
• Monitoring: Log counts: places, sites, emails, rows.
• Storage: Add DB node for "already-seen".
• CRM Sync: Push directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.

🚀 How to Import & Run

1. Import JSON workflow into n8n.
2. Configure Google Sheets + Places API credentials.
3. Update search query in Text Search node.
4. Test with a single query.

🚀 Next Steps

• Enrichment: add Clearbit/LinkedIn scraping.
• Verification: SMTP-free email checks.
• Outreach: pipe into MailerLite/HubSpot.
• Attribution: log outreach results in CRM.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

– Kolton Dupey