GMapsScraper AI

I'm building [GMapsScraper](https://gmapsscraper.io) — an AI-powered Google Maps scraper for lead generation. Instead of just guessing which industries our users should target, I decided to actually run the numbers.

What I did

I wrote a Python script to batch-scrape Google Maps across 15 industries × 5 US cities = 75 searches, collecting 1,174 business listings. For each business I recorded: phone, website, rating, and reviews.

Then I ran a second script to crawl every business website and extract email addresses — because Google Maps listings almost never include emails directly.

The whole thing took about 40 minutes to collect and 20 minutes to enrich.

The results surprised me

Phone numbers are basically universal (99.2%) — no surprise there.

Websites too (97.9%) — nearly every business has one.

But emails? Only 36.8% overall. And the variance is massive:

Top 5 — best for email outreach:

- 🟢 Hair Salon — 60.4%

- 🟢 Contractor — 47.4%

- 🟢 Marketing Agency — 44.9%

- 🟢 Plumber — 43.1%

- 🟢 Dentist — 40.9%

Bottom 5 — better use the phone:

- 🔴 Car Dealership — 12.3%

- 🔴 Lawyer — 25.0%

- 🔴 Hotel — 28.9%

- 🟡 Real Estate Agent — 32.5%

- 🟡 Insurance Agent — 33.3%

Hair salons are 5x more reachable by email than car dealerships. That's a huge gap I didn't expect.

Why the gap?

It comes down to business structure:

- Small, owner-operated businesses (salons, plumbers, contractors) put their email right on their website. Every inquiry = potential customer.

- CRM-driven businesses (car dealerships, hotels) funnel everything through web forms. You'll never find a direct email.

- Regulated industries (lawyers) intentionally gate their contact info behind intake forms.

City differences

- New York — 40.9% email rate (best)

- Chicago — 40.1%

- Houston — 36.4%

- Miami — 34.9%

- Los Angeles — 31.9% (worst — more corporate/franchise heavy)

What this changed about my product

This data changed how I think about GMapsScraper's positioning:

1. We now recommend specific industries to new users — "start with hair salons or contractors if you need emails"

2. The two-step workflow matters — scrape the listing, then enrich from the website. Without step 2, email rates are near zero.

3. We published the full report as a blog post — original data is the best kind of content marketing. One research article is worth more than 20 generic SEO posts for building backlinks.

The meta lesson for indie hackers

If you're building a SaaS, use your own tool to create original research. You have a unique data advantage that nobody else has. The research:

- Gives your users genuinely useful insights

- Creates a linkable asset that earns backlinks naturally

- Proves your product works (we scraped 1,174 businesses to write this — that's a demo in itself)

- Costs nothing but your time

Full report with all the data: [gmapsscraper.io/blog/google-maps-business-data-report-2026](https://gmapsscraper.io/blog/google-maps-business-data-report-2026)

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Has anyone else used their own product to create research content? How did it work for you?