Comprehensive POI Data at Your Fingertips: Exploring the Business Listings Database
Choosing the right locations to expand your business’s service area can determine the success or failure of an investment. However, how can companies determine if expanding to a new location will be profitable or if excessive competition will harm the expansion? Besides, what makes one location attract a steady flow of customers while another struggles to generate demand?
Businesses can figure it out with a comprehensive market analysis involving detailed business listings and POI data. Understanding local markets and competitor presence requires access to large-scale, structured data on businesses, from basic contact information to peak attendance hours. But what exactly are POI and business listings data, and how can companies acquire it in large volumes?
In this article, we’ll explore POI and business listings data and how to access it quickly and efficiently. We’ll specifically focus on the Business Listings database, highlighting its best use cases while also examining scenarios where APIs may be more suitable.
Contents:
Understanding POI and business listings data
➤ What are POI and business listings data?
➤ How can you get POI and business listings data?
Assessing the capabilities of the Business Listings database: Use cases
➤ Exploring possible business competitors in certain locations
➤ Identifying businesses for partnerships or promotion
➤ Powering up local SEO tools
Wrap-up
Understanding POI and business listings data
What are POI and business listings data?
You must’ve used Google Maps or other navigation apps at least once to find places to visit before planning a trip. When opening a map, you will see various pins and icons depicting real-world locations, such as museums, restaurants, and hotels, like in the screenshot below.
When put on the map, these real-world locations are called points of interest or POIs because they are considered interesting and useful for people. Points of interest on a map are not limited to physical places. They may also indicate services, businesses, or landmarks that provide valuable information to users. Essentially, any location that people might seek out for navigation, commerce, or convenience can be categorized as a point of interest. In technical terms, POI data encompasses coordinates of particular places with additional information about them, such as open hours, name and description, reviews, and more.
Want to learn more about POI data? Check out our detailed blog post.
Almost any business entity, from small cafes to large logistic terminals, can also be listed as POIs on the map. However, location-based businesses are presented with detailed data that goes far beyond basic POI information. It encompasses many attributes that provide deeper insights into a company’s operations, offerings, and customer reception. For example, you can notice additional details such as customer ratings, popular hours, business category, place ID, and even interaction options like calling or messaging a business.
These details, collectively known as business listings data, are critical for local search visibility and customer engagement. Google primarily sources this data from business owners who manage their Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business). Additionally, Google aggregates information from various sources, including third-party data providers, user contributions, and its own data collection processes.
However, why is such data useful for companies planning business expansion? Simply put, it is a core prerequisite for data-driven local market exploration and competitor analysis. Access to detailed business listings data allows you to analyze your business’s existing and potential competitors, what services and amenities they offer, and how people rate them. Moreover, by exploring business listings, you can adapt your own offerings to customer expectations and preferences to enter the new market easily. We explain it on the example of a use case in this part of the article. in this part of the article.
Moreover, both POI and business listings data are invaluable for companies seeking new partnerships or promotional agencies. Knowing the profiles and performance of local businesses, promoters can approach those who struggle to gain attention and offer them promotional services. Logistics or delivery enterprises, on the other hand, can find potential business partners and, thus, expand their own services effectively. Finally, SEO tool developers can leverage POI data to create powerful local SEO apps to help businesses increase their visibility on Google Maps.
The POI and business listings data are definitely precious for striving businesses. But how can this comprehensive data be obtained in a format suitable for data-driven research? There are three different ways, each with its own unique specifications.
How can you get POI and business listings data?
You can get business listings and POI data using the following three methods: web scraping, APIs, and purchasing a proprietary database. Let’s explore each of them in detail:
1. Web scraping. This approach is the most straightforward, as you only need to manually scrape data from business listings on Google Maps or other platforms like Trustpilot. Nevertheless, this method is the least effective unless you do very little research for one location.
If you want to get data on numerous business listings in different places and structure data properly, scraping becomes a nightmare. You may spend lots of time and resources manually forming a business listing dataset for research. Needless to say, you won’t be able to update it fast and frequently. Sure, you can create or purchase a web scraper, but it might be expensive, especially for one-time research.
2. Using APIs for data retrieval. APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, use the request-response method and can fetch data directly from the source. This means you can get considerable volumes of the most recent or real-time business listings data from Google Business and Google Maps. APIs retrieve data in structured formats like JSON, which can be easily interpreted and used in research. Moreover, with APIs, you can scale data retrieval based on your specific needs and budget.
3. Purchasing a proprietary database. Databases encompass vast, precompiled datasets that contain millions of business listings and points of interest. They can be delivered directly to the user’s storage for convenient and secure data access. You can fetch data from the database instantly and use specific algorithms to run an analysis, saving you time. Databases come at a considerable price, but the cost-effectiveness of a database purchase depends on the project size and business needs.
As you can see, there are multiple ways to retrieve business listings and POI data, each with its own specifics and use cases. But which method is the best for instant access to large-scale market research data? Purchasing the Business Listings database is often the most efficient solution. With over 100 million business entities and POI records, our database provides a ready-made resource of big data for complex projects. However, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
To provide a clearer picture, the next section of this article will explore practical use cases where the Business Listings database proves invaluable. We’ll also discuss situations where alternative data sources, such as APIs, will be a better fit.
Assessing the capabilities of the Business Listings database: Use cases
1 Exploring possible business competitors in certain locations
Suppose you own a large location-based business and plan to expand your services to a new city or district. Before starting an expansion, you want to thoroughly analyze the potential competitors in a new service area to tailor your strategy. The problem is that you need to conduct this large-scale analysis fast, and at the same time, you require tons of complete data on each business entity.
You could use APIs to collect all necessary data and create a custom in-house dataset. However, an API-based approach can be challenging in such a situation. Despite their effectiveness, APIs may struggle to quickly process and deliver massive amounts of data. Additionally, setting up a structured API data storage may take extra time, leading to delays.
In this case, purchasing a ready-made Business Listings database will eliminate your worries. With this database, you will almost instantly access comprehensive data on competitors’ businesses across multiple locations. From contact information to popular hours, you will have all the necessary data at your fingertips.
Besides, you don’t need to design and fill a new storage with data samples. We can deliver the Business Listings database straight to your existing storage, and you will have full control over the data. To work with the database, you should create specific algorithms to fetch the relevant data. It may seem complicated, but eventually, you will be able to retrieve and interpret the data for research as you wish.
For a clearer picture, let’s examine the dataset sample from the database and how you can use it.
Example of a dataset from the Business Listings database:
{
"title": "Lombardo’s Sicilian Pizza",
"description": "At Lombardo’s, we’ve been using the same family recipe and making our pizzas the same way since 1957. We’re old school for a reason: our pizza tastes better! We make our unique sauce fresh every day, and every Lombardo’s pizza crust is hand rolled, fresh to order, made with a bit more yeast and sugar to cook up quickly with a soft, flavorful inside and a crispy crunch on the bottom. Once you’ve tried Lombardo’s Pizza, it’s sure to become your favorite pizza on the Lakeshore – or anywhere else!",
"category": "Pizza delivery",
"category_ids": [
"pizza_delivery_service",
"meal_takeaway"
],
"additional_categories": [
"Takeout Restaurant"
],
"cid": "2412308833485550683",
"feature_id": "0x881bd66f3e7b5351:0x217a3e1a6471745b",
"address": "1697 W Sherman Blvd, Muskegon, MI 49441",
"address_info": {
"borough": "Glenside",
"address": "1697 W Sherman Blvd",
"city": "Muskegon",
"zip": "49441",
"region": "Michigan",
"country_code": "US"
},
"place_id": "ChIJUVN7Pm_WG4gRW3RxZBo-eiE",
"phone": "+1231-755-8111",
"url": "http://lombardosmuskegon.com/",
"domain": "lombardosmuskegon.com",
"logo": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-V0ln3Z6x3GU/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/uCt8jeorXhE/s44-p-k-no-ns-nd/photo.jpg",
"main_image": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipO78Xt03XigMUOYDj4DfXL7D3XhU-WRrS-ACAk2=w426-h240-k-no",
"total_photos": 50,
"snippet": "1697 W Sherman Blvd, Muskegon, MI 49441",
"latitude": 43.205452799999996,
"longitude": -86.2853444,
"is_claimed": true,
"attributes": {
"available_attributes": {
"service_options": [
"has_takeout"
],
"accessibility": [
"has_wheelchair_accessible_entrance"
]
},
"unavailable_attributes": null
},
"place_topics": {
"price": 22,
"stromboli": 16,
"sub": 10,
"lunch": 19,
"business": 9,
"pie": 6,
"bacon": 5,
"pickle pizza": 4,
"area": 4,
"hands": 5
},
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 4.5,
"votes_count": 279,
"rating_max": null
},
"rating_distribution": {
"1": 12,
"2": 9,
"3": 11,
"4": 32,
"5": 215
},
"people_also_search": [
{
"cid": "15475392251705711269",
"feature_id": "0x0:0xd6c3a342c2c05aa5",
"title": "Fazoli's",
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 3.6,
"votes_count": 894,
"rating_max": null
}
},
{
"cid": "15037260989464878387",
"feature_id": "0x0:0xd0af1532f7e49d33",
"title": "Domino's Pizza",
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 4,
"votes_count": 323,
"rating_max": null
}
},
{
"cid": "9809710928747836826",
"feature_id": "0x0:0x8823181d9948359a",
"title": "Fricano's Muskegon Lake",
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 4.3,
"votes_count": 1123,
"rating_max": null
}
},
{
"cid": "12237806704699654346",
"feature_id": "0x0:0xa9d56c5bf78440ca",
"title": "Jet's Pizza",
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 3.8,
"votes_count": 239,
"rating_max": null
}
},
{
"cid": "14673718806912129913",
"feature_id": "0x0:0xcba385829bf75b79",
"title": "Pizza Ranch",
"rating": {
"rating_type": "Max5",
"value": 4.2,
"votes_count": 1674,
"rating_max": null
}
}
],
"work_time": {
"work_hours": {
"timetable": {
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},
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"minute": 0
}
}
],
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}
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}
}
],
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"time": {
"hour": 11,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 27
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 12,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 25
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 13,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 22
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 14,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 0
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 15,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 0
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 16,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 51
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 17,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 61
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 18,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 64
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 19,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 59
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 20,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 47
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 21,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 32
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 22,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 0
},
{
"time": {
"hour": 23,
"minute": 0
},
"popular_index": 0
}
]
}
},
"local_business_links": [
{
"type": "menu",
"title": "lombardosmuskegon.com",
"url": "https://lombardosmuskegon.com/menu/"
}
],
"contacts": [
{
"type": "Telephone",
"value": "+12317558111",
"source": "google_business"
}
],
"time_update": "2023-02-15T12:50:30",
"check_url": "https://www.google.com/maps?cid=2412308833485550683&hl=en&gl=US",
"price_level": "inexpensive",
"hotel_rating": null
}
As you can see, each business entity in a database comes with a set of detailed information useful for evaluating competitors’ potential. For example, this data can be divided into several categories for better understanding:
- General contact and location information. The dataset includes a business’s full address and geographical coordinates, along with contact details such as a phone number and website URL. Location data can be used to visualize competitor distribution through in-house infographics and reports. Additionally, by exploring the competitors’ websites, you can get insights into their online presence and what types of website content they use.
In the database, you can find location data fields
address,address_info,longitude, andlatitude. Contact details are located in thephone,domain, andurlfields. - Business description and categories. In the dataset, you will receive a full description of the business entity, a business category with
category_ids, and additional business categories. This information is necessary for finding the relevant listing in a database and can also be valuable when setting up your Google Business Profile (GBP). For instance, analyzing competitor descriptions can help refine your brand voice and keyword strategy, making your own business profile more relevant.You can locate the main and additional GBP categories of the business entity in the
categoryandadditional_categoriesfields respectively. Thecategory_idfield contains IDs of categories relevant to the main business category. - Available attributes. This data encompasses the service and accessibility options of a selected business entity. Similarly, you can research what services popular restaurants offer in a certain location and try to consider the availability of such services at your restaurant chain during expansion. This data on available and unavailable service options for a business can be found in the
available_attributesandunavailable_attributesarrays. - Rating and similar businesses. The dataset has comprehensive rating information about each business, including rating value and distribution. You will also receive information on other popular businesses in the same category. This data is invaluable for assessing competitor popularity and finding new competitors you might have missed. The data on other popular businesses is listed in the
people_also_searcharray, and information on ratings can be found in theratingandrating_distributionobjects.
Overall, every business listing in the database is a complete dossier on a potential competitor. With all this data, you can precisely assess the local competition and understand how successful your restaurant chain might be among other restaurants.
However, you might think that purchasing a Business listing database might be pretty expensive, even for your large enterprise. Maybe it is still better to collect all the data with APIs? Let’s do some simple calculations to figure it out.
The price for the Business Listings database for the US region, which contains 18.3 million records, is $2750. However, the number will differ if you want to use the Business Listings API. To obtain 18.3 million records, you must make 18300 requests for $0.01, and the price per record is $0,0003.
18300 x $0,01 + 18300000 x $0,0003 = $5673
As a result, you will pay $2923 more for the same amount of data with APIs. Not to mention, purchasing the Business Listings database will give you a 50% discount for updates, ensuring your data is still current. That makes this database a cost-effective solution in this particular case. For more information, you can always visit our Pricing page.
2 Identifying businesses for partnerships or promotion
Business listings and POI data are great not only for competitor research but also for seeking business partnership opportunities. With instant access to this data from the Business Listings database, you can quickly analyze local establishments’ profiles and find companies that match your requirements. Let’s use two simple examples to illustrate this.
Getting data on potential business partners
Suppose a logistics company or major delivery service is analyzing potential locations for expanding its service area. The priority is to research stores and restaurants that may be interested in new product suppliers or delivery options. However, manually gathering business profiles, contact information, and service details can be time-consuming. Meanwhile, partnership strategy decisions need to be made as quickly as possible.
To free themselves from tedious data gathering, such companies can purchase the Business Listings database and instantly start analyzing the data for research:
➤ Using algorithms, logistic company specialists can separately fetch the business listings that fall into “store”, "supermarket" and "grocery_store" categories. Then, they can get addresses and contact information (phone number, website URL) for sales teams to contact the stores. Besides, based on the rating, description and service options of the store, they can tailor partnership proposals or filter out irrelevant store profiles.
➤ Similarly, deliveries can obtain restaurants’ addresses and contact information to approach their owners. They can also delve into restaurant business profiles to see whether they already have delivery options. By filtering out irrelevant or unpopular restaurants, deliveries can form a list of potential partners in the location and start approaching them.
Searching for possible buyers of promotional services
Promotional bureaus or marketing agencies, especially those promoting local businesses, can also significantly benefit from the Business Listings database. Assuming that such a company wants to find new clients for promotional partnerships, they need to process a lot of data on local business profiles. Again, the Business Listings database can instantly provide them with complete information about each business entity.
For example, by analyzing a database, a promoting bureau can form a list of local supermarkets, restaurants, and beauty salons that, for some reason, have low ratings and struggle to win competition. By getting the contact information, they can reach out to these businesses and discuss the possible options for promotion or rebranding. Besides, if a marketing agency provides SEO services, its specialists can analyze a business website and suggest solutions to improve website visibility or local SEO.
Additionally, such agencies may run targeted advertising campaigns on search engines or social media. These campaigns can be tailored to businesses in specific locations, addressing their unique challenges and pain points.
For instance, from the address_info field in the dataset, you can get location data to target a campaign to a specific city or borough. You can also check the business ratings in the rating and rating_distribution fields to pull business profiles with low ratings. Moreover, from the domain and url fields, you can fetch domains and URLs of businesses to analyze website rankings and check the content.
As might be obvious, the Business Listing database is a comprehensive big data solution for various purposes, from large-scale competitor analysis to searching for new business partnerships. Nevertheless, this database is not the best solution for everything. We’ll demonstrate this in the use case below.
3 Powering up local SEO tools
When databases excel at providing instant access to business listings data for extensive research and analysis, they may not be versatile enough to create local SEO tools. The key requirement for local SEO software is to provide the most recent or real-time insights.
Unfortunately, databases can’t provide real-time search results, and datasets take a long time to update. For instance, the full update cycle of the Business Listings database can vary from 90 to 180 days, depending on the location. Additionally, despite containing a lot of details on business listings, the database lacks additional data such as review information or questions and answers. These insights can significantly increase their value for local SEO tools.
What can be used instead of databases as a data source for a local SEO tool? In this case, APIs serve as the best solution. By fetching data from Google services like Google Business, Google Maps, and other apps like Trustpilot and Tripadvisor, APIs can provide the real-time data needed for local SEO tools. Besides, APIs can be easily integrated into existing tools or serve as a foundation for creating low-level automation, providing necessary flexibility.
DataForSEO has a comprehensive set of Business Data APIs for building a sophisticated local SEO tool from scratch. From real-time business listing data from Google My Business Info to detailed review information from Google Reviews API, our API solutions can power any feature for local SEO tools.
To provide a clear picture, let’s look at some features for local SEO tools that can be powered by DataForSEO APIs:
- Local business rank tracker. The rank tracking feature allows users of a local SEO tool to check whether their business appears in local search results for a specific query. Additionally, users can compare their business’s ranking performance against other businesses in the area. This essential feature can be powered by data from the Google My Business Info endpoint. It provides a comprehensive dataset on each business entity, similar to the Business Listings Database. The key difference is that Google My Business Info supplies live data.
- Comparison of business profiles. This feature lets users compare business entity profiles and check whether their Google Business Profile (GBP) is complete. It helps business owners identify missing features in their profile compared to competitors, ensuring they provide as much relevant information as possible. Adding such a feature is also possible with the Google My Business Info endpoint.
- Reviews research. Accessing business reviews is essential for two key reasons. First, it allows users to analyze how competitors are perceived, identifying their strengths and weaknesses based on customer feedback. Second, reviews can be used to discover new keyword ideas, helping businesses optimize their website or profile content for better relevance. Complete review data from Google, Trustpilot, and Tripadvisor can be obtained using the Google Reviews, Trustpilot Reviews, and Tripadvisor Reviews endpoints.
- Checking updates and Q&A. Tracking key updates from competitors’ businesses is crucial for more effective competitor monitoring and fine-tuning of local SEO strategies. Additionally, analyzing customer questions and how business owners respond can provide insights into competitor engagement and customer concerns. The Google Updates API and Google Questions and Answers API allow users to access real-time updates on local businesses. As a result, businesses can use this information to adjust their content, services, and communication strategies accordingly.
As you can see, using DataForSEO APIs, you can build a full-fledged local SEO software powered with the latest data on business listings, reviews, and updates. If you want to delve deeper into Business data APIs, check out this blog post.
The pricing for DataForSEO Business Data APIs is indeed convenient. Our APIs operate on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning that you pay only to make API calls and retrieve data. For example, the price per retrieved business profile from the Google My Business Info endpoint in Live mode is just $0.0054. To get information on 1000 business profiles, you will pay only $5.4. That makes Business Data API a cost-effective data solution for local SEO tools. Visit the Pricing page for more details.
Overall, the Business Listings database provides extensive and structured business data for extensive market research, competitor analysis, and local marketing initiatives. However, the database is unsuitable and flexible enough to serve as a data source for dynamic applications, such as local SEO tools. In this case, APIs are definitely the preferable option. Besides, if you want to know more about the differences between APIs and databases, see our comprehensive article.
Wrap-up
The Business Listings database is a powerful and comprehensive data solution for large-scale research, competitor analysis, and market expansion. With instant access to millions of business records, it provides the necessary data to explore competitive landscapes, identify partnership opportunities, and easily make data-driven decisions. For companies looking to analyze vast amounts of business data efficiently, a database offers the most scalable and cost-effective approach.
However, this database is not a one-size-fits-all solution. For projects requiring real-time updates and flexible data retrieval, such as local SEO tools, APIs are the better choice. They provide live data on business listings, review data, and other up-to-date information unavailable in the database.
At DataForSEO, we offer both powerful Business data APIs and an extensive Business Listing database to support any data-driven project. Whether you need real-time business data or a structured dataset ready for immediate analysis, we have the right solution. Sign up today and get access to the best data available!
