How Does Filtering Work in Google Maps Search Export?

Why do we have filtering in Google Maps Search Export?

Honestly, Google Maps is the problem.

When you search for businesses on Google Maps, the results don’t always match what you need.


Our scraper filters the results to make sure you get relevant and accurate businesses.

How?

Let's understand the problem and how our scraper solves it.

Why Does Google Maps Show Irrelevant Results?

When you search for businesses on Google Maps, you often get results that don’t match what you’re looking for.

You often get wrong business type or wrong city/country.

For example, if you search for plumbers in Alaska, you might get results for plumbing supply stores instead of actual plumbers.



Or you search for businesses in one city and get results from another city or sometimes another country.

Even if you search for businesses in a specific area, Google Maps might pull results from outside that region.

For example, if you're searching for plumbers in Alaska but Maps might also return businesses from Canada.



That’s why our Google Maps Search Export has built-in filtering to help you get more accurate results.

What is Filtering in Google Maps Search Export?

To fix this problem, Google Maps Search Export automatically checks two things:

Category or Business Type Filtering
Location Filtering

In category filtering, the scraper makes sure the business matches your provided search keyword or business category.


While in location filtering, the scraper makes sure the all collected businesses are within 50KM of your chosen location.

Are mismatched results removed from the final output?

No, instead of removing businesses that don’t match, we flag them for you so you can decide what to keep.

We add two extra columns to your file to make sorting easy

match_filters

This column tells you whether a business listing matches your targeted category or location or not.


true or t means both location and business type are correct.
false or f means either category or location does not match the provided input.

But how do I know why a business listing is mismatch?

no_match_reasons

If a result does not match your search, this column tells you the exact reason(s) for the mismatch, such as:


no_category_match means the business category doesn’t match the search keyword.
no_location_match means the business is outside the specified location range.


But how can I separate the good and bad results?

How to sort results based on filter?

In Google Sheets or Excel, you can use the filter by values option to sort your business listings data.

Select match_filters column
Create new filter
Choose Filter by values


You can choose to see relevant or irrelevant results and remove the business listings you don't want in a single click.

Updated on: 13/03/2025