Google Maps to Leads: Automate Business Info Scraping with n8n

Every sales professional knows the drill. You need to research 50 businesses in your territory. Each one requires the same tedious process: copy the address from Google Maps, hunt for contact emails on their website, check their ratings, jot down business hours, and try to understand what they actually do.

Three hours later, you've researched maybe 10 businesses. Your eyes hurt from squinting at tiny website contact pages. Your spreadsheet looks like a mess of half-completed rows.

There's a better way. This n8n workflow eliminates the manual grunt work entirely. It connects Google Maps data with AI research capabilities to automatically gather complete business profiles. While traditional scraping tools just grab surface information, this system goes deeper. It finds email addresses, researches company backgrounds, and organizes everything into clean, duplicate-free datasets.

Prerequisites: What You’ll Need to Get Started

Before diving into the build, you’ll need access to a few key services:

• n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted)
• Google Sheets API credentials for data storage
• OpenAI API key for the AI agent functionality
• Serper API key for Google Maps data extraction
• Perplexity API key for email and background enrichment

The beauty of this setup? Most of these services offer generous free tiers. You can test the entire system without breaking the bank.

Key Components: The Building Blocks

This workflow leverages several powerful n8n nodes that work together seamlessly:

• LangChain Chat Trigger for conversational input
• AI Agent with OpenAI integration for intelligent processing
• Google Maps Scraper Tool powered by Serper API
• Google Sheets nodes for data storage and triggers
• HTTP Request nodes for Perplexity API calls
• Code nodes for data processing and duplicate detection
• Filter and If nodes for workflow logic

Each component plays a specific role in transforming raw search queries into enriched business intelligence.

Step 1: Set Up Your AI Agent Foundation

Start by creating the core AI agent that will orchestrate everything. The Chat Trigger node acts as your entry point, accepting natural language queries like “find gyms in Chicago” or “get restaurants near Times Square.”

Connect this to an AI Agent node powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4. The system prompt is crucial here. It instructs the AI to return results in a precise JSON format that can be stored directly in your database.

The prompt specifically tells the agent: “You are a research agent that finds business contact information from Google Maps. Your job is to return results in a precise JSON format.”

Add a Window Buffer Memory node to give your agent conversational context. This means it can remember previous searches and build on them naturally.

Step 2: Connect the Google Maps Scraper

Here’s where the magic starts. The Google Maps Scraper tool uses Serper API to extract business data. It accepts three key parameters: the search query, location coordinates, and page number for pagination.

The tool description tells the AI exactly how to use it: “This bot helps you scrape all contact information for lead gen from Google Maps. Input query ‘q’ for search input, ‘ll’ for latLng, ‘page’ is for the current page.”

When someone asks for “coffee shops in Seattle,” the AI automatically formats this into the right API call, including proper coordinate formatting like “@47.6062,-122.3321,11z” for Seattle.

Step 3: Build the Data Processing Pipeline

Raw Google Maps data needs cleaning and structuring. The Parse Content node handles this heavy lifting. It processes the API response, extracts business information, and formats it consistently.

The real intelligence comes in the duplicate detection system. The workflow creates unique business keys by combining normalized names and addresses. This prevents the same McDonald’s location from appearing twice in your database.

Each business gets a UUID for tracking, and the system remembers what it has already processed. Smart duplicate detection means you can run the same search multiple times without cluttering your data.

Step 4: Set Up Intelligent Data Enrichment

Here’s where this workflow goes beyond basic scraping. When new businesses are added to your Google Sheet, a trigger automatically kicks off an enrichment process.

The system sends each business to Perplexity AI with a structured prompt: “Get the email and company background of [Business Name] in [Address], reference website [Website URL].”

Perplexity searches the web and returns structured JSON with email addresses and company descriptions. This enriched data gets automatically updated back into your spreadsheet.

Step 5: Implement Smart Storage and Monitoring

The Google Sheets integration isn’t just about storage. It’s a complete data management system. The workflow uses separate nodes for initial data insertion and subsequent updates.

A Google Sheets Trigger monitors for new rows and automatically initiates the enrichment process. The system maintains data integrity by using UUID matching for updates, ensuring the right information reaches the right business record.

Filter nodes prevent processing header rows or incomplete data. The workflow includes error handling to continue processing even if individual businesses fail enrichment.

Benefits and Use Cases: Why This Workflow Changes Everything

This automated lead generation system opens up numerous possibilities:

Sales Teams can research entire territories in minutes instead of days. Input “medical practices in Austin” and get back complete contact information, ratings, and company backgrounds.

Marketing Agencies can build targeted prospect lists for specific industries and locations. The enriched data helps craft personalized outreach campaigns.

Business Development professionals can quickly assess market opportunities by gathering comprehensive competitor intelligence.

Recruitment Firms can identify potential client companies in specific sectors and geographic areas.

The workflow handles pagination automatically, so you’re not limited to just the first page of results. It can process hundreds of businesses while you focus on strategy rather than data entry.

The combination of AI orchestration and intelligent enrichment means you get more than just basic contact details. You understand each business’s background, making your outreach more informed and effective.

Conclusion: Your New Lead Generation Superpower

Manual business research is dead. This n8n workflow represents the future of lead generation: intelligent, automated, and thorough.

You’ve just learned how to build a system that thinks like a researcher, acts like a data analyst, and works like a full-time assistant. It never gets tired, never makes transcription errors, and never forgets to check for duplicates.

The best part? Once it’s running, you can focus on what humans do best: building relationships and closing deals. Let the machines handle the busywork.

Your competition is still copying and pasting from Google Maps. You’ll be three steps ahead with enriched, organized, duplicate-free prospect data delivered automatically to your spreadsheet.

Time to level up your lead generation game.