Scrape Google Maps by category Pick a business type, capture every listing with contacts

What scraping by category actually means

Google Maps organizes businesses into categories. Every profile carries a primary type like "dental clinic" or "italian restaurant", plus secondary ones. When you type a category into the search box, Maps returns the matching businesses for the area on screen. That result set is exactly what you want to capture.

Scraping by category simply means turning that on-screen list into a clean spreadsheet. Instead of copying names one by one, you let a tool read the listings Maps already shows you and structure them into rows: name, address, rating, website, phone and more. Google explains how businesses pick these business categories, which is why a category search is such a precise way to target one type of business.

The free Vonsel Chrome extension is built for this. You do the search, it does the capture. The category is your filter, the extension is your net.

How to scrape a category in four steps

1. Search the category. Open Google Maps and type the business type plus the place, for example "hair salons in Austin" or just "roofers" while the map is centered on your target zone. Let the results load down the left panel.

2. Open the Vonsel pop-up. Click the extension icon. A side panel appears over Maps. Hit capture and it starts reading the listings in view, scrolling to gather the full set that Google returns for that search.

3. Let it enrich. For each business the extension visits the website in the background and pulls the email, phone and social profiles it finds. This is the difference between a list of names and a list you can actually contact. See the details in our guide on extracting emails from Google Maps.

4. Export or send to the dashboard. Download a CSV, XLSX or JSON file, or push the whole capture into your Vonsel dashboard where it becomes a mapped list of leads. If spreadsheets are your endpoint, the walkthrough on exporting Google Maps data to CSV covers the format options.

Make your category searches count

The quality of a category scrape depends on the search you run. A vague term returns a mixed bag, while a precise one returns a tight list. A few habits help a lot.

Use the exact category label when you can. Terms that match a real Google category, like "chiropractor" or "auto repair shop", line up with how profiles are tagged. Google Maps Platform documents the underlying place types, which mirror the categories you see in the app.

Keep the map zoomed to one area at a time. Google caps how many results it returns for a single view, so scanning one city district, capturing, then panning to the next gives you fuller coverage than trying to grab a whole region at once. To go wide across many terms, the guide on bulk keyword search in Google Maps shows how to chain categories efficiently.

The fields a category capture returns

A category scrape is only useful if the columns are worth having. Here is what the extension writes for each business it captures, and why each field matters when you start working the list.

Because the email and phone come from the business website rather than the Maps card alone, a category capture is closer to a working prospect list than a raw export. That matters when you compare it to buying a stale database, where the data is often months out of date.

Why the capture is just the start

Most tools stop at the CSV. That leaves you with a file and no plan. Vonsel treats the category capture as the raw material for a mapped CRM, where each business becomes a card you can move through your sales stages.

Inside the dashboard, the review data you captured turns into Sales and Reviews Intelligence: pain points customers complain about, satisfaction signals, and angles you can lead with. Email Intelligence then drafts a message per business that references those specifics, so a plumber gets a different pitch than a med spa. This is the value-added layer a plain scrape cannot reach.

It is also worth knowing the rules. Capturing public business data is generally fine, but how you use contact details is governed by local law. Our overview of whether scraping Google Maps is legal is a sensible read before you start emailing a whole category.