Google Maps Weak Profile Finder

Find local businesses on Google Maps with weak or incomplete profiles — missing websites, missing phones, low review counts, low ratings, missing categories or hours. Each row is ranked with a transparent weakness score, reason tags, and a recommended pitch angle for SEO, GBP, web design, and reputation outreach.

V1 deliberately avoids website crawling, email extraction, full review scraping, photos, menus, and AI enrichment so the run stays fast and cheap. You only pay for unique weak-profile rows that pass your filters and are successfully written to the dataset.

✨ Why this scraper

• Weakness-focused — returns only businesses with at least one visible weakness signal, with explainable scoring and reason tags.
• Pay-Per-Event — you pay per saved row. No subscription, no monthly fee, no hidden compute charges.
• No login, no cookies, no sessions — just keyword + location.
• CSV-friendly output — flat 27-field structure, no nested objects.
• Transparent scoring — rule-based (no AI), explained below.
• Five weakness modes — bias scoring towards missingWebsite, lowReviews, lowRating, incompleteProfile, or run balanced.

---

🚀 Quick start — sample inputs

Example 1 — single query, balanced

{
  "searchQueries": [
    { "key": "plumbers", "value": "Canberra ACT" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "country": "AU",
  "language": "en",
  "minWeaknessScore": 40,
  "weaknessMode": "balanced",
  "websiteFilter": "any",
  "phoneFilter": "any",
  "maxRating": 4.2,
  "maxReviewCount": 30,
  "categoryFilter": "",
  "includeOpeningHours": true,
  "includeCoordinates": true,
  "deduplicateResults": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Example 2 — multi-query, only businesses with no website (web-design lead list)

{
  "searchQueries": [
    { "key": "electricians", "value": "Sydney NSW" },
    { "key": "dentists",     "value": "Melbourne VIC" },
    { "key": "cafes",        "value": "Brisbane QLD" }
  ],
  "maxResults": 200,
  "country": "AU",
  "language": "en",
  "minWeaknessScore": 60,
  "weaknessMode": "missingWebsite",
  "websiteFilter": "missingWebsite",
  "phoneFilter": "any",
  "maxRating": 4.2,
  "maxReviewCount": 30,
  "categoryFilter": "",
  "includeOpeningHours": true,
  "includeCoordinates": true,
  "deduplicateResults": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

The searchQueries field uses Apify's Key/Value form editor — the Key column is the business keyword (e.g. plumbers), the Value column is the location (e.g. Canberra ACT). Add one row per search.

---

📦 Output

The dataset has five views:

Tab	Filter
Weak profile leads	All saved rows (full 27-column flat table).
High opportunity	weakness_score >= 75
Missing website	has_website = false
Low reviews	Reviews < 30 (or missing)
Low rating	Rating < 3.8 (or missing)

Weak profile leads — table view

Sample record — Weak profile leads

{
  "search_keyword": "plumbers",
  "search_location": "Canberra ACT",
  "business_name": "MTA Plumbing & Gas",
  "category": "Plumber",
  "rating": 5,
  "review_count": 17,
  "phone": "+61 439 451 555",
  "website": "",
  "website_domain": "",
  "address": "Canberra ACT",
  "city": "Canberra",
  "state": "ACT",
  "postcode": "",
  "country": "Australia",
  "google_maps_url": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/MTA+Plumbing+%26+Gas/",
  "place_id": "0x6b164d85a3f912bd:0x8a2c3d4e5f6a7b8c",
  "latitude": -35.2809,
  "longitude": 149.13,
  "opening_hours": "",
  "is_open_now": null,
  "has_website": false,
  "has_phone": true,
  "weakness_score": 60,
  "weakness_label": "Medium Opportunity",
  "weakness_tags": [
    "missing_website",
    "low_review_count",
    "missing_opening_hours",
    "website_design_opportunity",
    "review_generation_opportunity",
    "local_seo_opportunity"
  ],
  "recommended_pitch_angle": "Website design opportunity",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-06T13:55:53.315Z"
}

Sample record — High opportunity (score ≥ 75)

{
  "search_keyword": "plumbers",
  "search_location": "Canberra ACT",
  "business_name": "Example Local Plumbing",
  "category": "Plumber",
  "rating": 3.6,
  "review_count": 4,
  "phone": "",
  "website": "",
  "website_domain": "",
  "address": "Canberra ACT, Australia",
  "city": "Canberra",
  "state": "ACT",
  "postcode": "",
  "country": "Australia",
  "google_maps_url": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/example-local-plumbing/",
  "place_id": "0x6b164d0fe0a3a3ad:0x1234567890abcdef",
  "latitude": -35.2809,
  "longitude": 149.13,
  "opening_hours": "",
  "is_open_now": null,
  "has_website": false,
  "has_phone": false,
  "weakness_score": 90,
  "weakness_label": "High Opportunity",
  "weakness_tags": [
    "missing_website",
    "missing_phone",
    "very_low_review_count",
    "low_rating",
    "missing_opening_hours",
    "incomplete_profile",
    "website_design_opportunity",
    "reputation_opportunity",
    "review_generation_opportunity",
    "gbp_optimization_opportunity",
    "local_seo_opportunity"
  ],
  "recommended_pitch_angle": "Website design opportunity",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-06T14:00:00.000Z"
}

Sample record — Missing website

{
  "search_keyword": "plumbers",
  "search_location": "Canberra ACT",
  "business_name": "MTA Plumbing & Gas",
  "category": "Plumber",
  "rating": 5,
  "review_count": 17,
  "phone": "+61 439 451 555",
  "website": "",
  "website_domain": "",
  "address": "Canberra ACT",
  "city": "Canberra",
  "state": "ACT",
  "postcode": "",
  "country": "Australia",
  "google_maps_url": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/MTA+Plumbing+%26+Gas/",
  "place_id": "0x6b164d85a3f912bd:0x8a2c3d4e5f6a7b8c",
  "latitude": -35.2809,
  "longitude": 149.13,
  "has_website": false,
  "has_phone": true,
  "weakness_score": 60,
  "weakness_label": "Medium Opportunity",
  "weakness_tags": ["missing_website", "low_review_count", "website_design_opportunity"],
  "recommended_pitch_angle": "Website design opportunity"
}

Sample record — Low reviews

{
  "search_keyword": "electricians",
  "search_location": "Sydney NSW",
  "business_name": "The Local Electrician Sydney Level 2 & Emergency Specialists",
  "category": "Electrician",
  "rating": 4.9,
  "review_count": null,
  "phone": "+61 439 823 190",
  "website": "https://www.thelocalelectrician.com.au/",
  "website_domain": "thelocalelectrician.com.au",
  "address": "",
  "google_maps_url": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Local+Electrician+Sydney/",
  "place_id": "0x6b12bb6df74fac53:0xb207cd5a2b9b9258",
  "has_website": true,
  "has_phone": true,
  "weakness_score": 40,
  "weakness_label": "Low Opportunity",
  "weakness_tags": [
    "very_low_review_count",
    "missing_address",
    "missing_opening_hours",
    "review_generation_opportunity"
  ],
  "recommended_pitch_angle": "Review generation opportunity"
}

Sample record — Low rating

{
  "search_keyword": "cafes",
  "search_location": "Brisbane QLD",
  "business_name": "Example Cafe",
  "category": "Cafe",
  "rating": 3.4,
  "review_count": 87,
  "phone": "+61 7 0000 0000",
  "website": "https://example-cafe.com.au/",
  "website_domain": "example-cafe.com.au",
  "address": "100 Example Rd, Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia",
  "city": "Brisbane",
  "state": "QLD",
  "postcode": "4000",
  "country": "Australia",
  "google_maps_url": "https://www.google.com/maps/place/example-cafe/",
  "place_id": "0x6b915a0fe0a3a3ad:0xabcdef1234567890",
  "has_website": true,
  "has_phone": true,
  "weakness_score": 30,
  "weakness_label": "Low Opportunity",
  "weakness_tags": ["low_rating", "reputation_opportunity"],
  "recommended_pitch_angle": "Reputation improvement opportunity"
}

Output fields (27)

search_keyword, search_location, business_name, category, rating, review_count, phone, website, website_domain, address, city, state, postcode, country, google_maps_url, place_id, latitude, longitude, opening_hours, is_open_now, has_website, has_phone, weakness_score, weakness_label, weakness_tags, recommended_pitch_angle, scraped_at.

---

🎯 Weakness scoring

Transparent rule-based score (0–100) computed from visible fields — no AI, no website crawling, no enrichment.

Base formula

Signal	Points
Missing website	+30
Missing phone	+20
Reviews missing or < 10	+20
Reviews 10–29	+10
Rating missing	+10
Rating < 3.8	+20
Rating 3.8–4.2	+10
Missing address	+10
Missing opening hours	+10
Missing category	+10

Score is capped at 100.

Weakness mode bias (stacks on top)

Mode	Bonus
balanced	(default formula only)
missingWebsite	+15 if no website
lowReviews	+15 if review count < 30
lowRating	+15 if rating < maxRating
incompleteProfile	+10 each for missing website, phone, address, category, opening hours

Labels

Score	Label
75–100	High Opportunity
50–74	Medium Opportunity
25–49	Low Opportunity
0–24	Weakness Not Clear

Recommended pitch angle

Derived from the highest-priority weakness tag — non-AI rule mapping.

Top weakness	Pitch angle
missing_website	Website design opportunity
low_rating	Reputation improvement opportunity
low_review_count	Review generation opportunity
missing_phone	Profile completion opportunity
incomplete_profile	GBP optimization opportunity

---

⚙️ Filters

Filter	Effect
minWeaknessScore	Save only rows with weakness score ≥ this value (default 40, range 0–100).
weaknessMode	Bias scoring towards a specific kind of weakness (balanced keeps everything broad).
websiteFilter	any / missingWebsite / hasWebsite.
phoneFilter	any / missingPhone / hasPhone.
maxRating	When weaknessMode = lowRating, drop businesses rated above this value.
maxReviewCount	When weaknessMode = lowReviews, drop businesses with more reviews than this value.
categoryFilter	Case-insensitive contains match against the business category.
deduplicateResults	Drop duplicates across queries (recommended ON).

Filters are applied after extraction and weakness scoring, before dataset push or event charge.

---

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event with a single event:

Event	When charged	Frequency
weak-profile-result	Each unique, filtered, weak-profile row successfully written to the dataset.	Per row

🚦 Proxy policy

Use Apify Datacenter proxy or no proxy for normal runs — both work reliably for Google Maps search at this actor's conservative concurrency (max=3).

Apify Residential proxy is not supported. The actor will fail at startup if apifyProxyGroups includes RESIDENTIAL. Reason: in pay-per-event actors, residential bandwidth (~proxy/GB) is billed to the developer, not the run user, so a single bandwidth-heavy run could exceed the per-result event revenue.

If you genuinely need residential routing, supply your own residential provider via the proxy editor's Custom proxy URLs field — that traffic goes through your provider, not Apify, and is unaffected:

http://user:pass@proxy.iproyal.com:12321
http://user:pass@proxy.brightdata.com:22225
http://user:pass@proxy.oxylabs.io:7777

Spending-cap behavior

The actor honors the user-configured per-run spending cap (Apify eventChargeLimitReached) and stops cleanly when reached.

Not charged for weak-profile-result

• Duplicates (de-duplicated by place_id, listing URL, name+address, name+phone, or name+location).
• Rows filtered out by minWeaknessScore, websiteFilter, phoneFilter, maxRating, maxReviewCount, or categoryFilter.
• Rows missing a business_name.
• Rows with no meaningful weakness signal.
• Failed dataset pushes.
• Anything after the per-run spending cap is reached.

---

📊 Run summary

After each run, a RUN_SUMMARY entry is written to the key-value store:

{
  "inputs_total": 3,
  "successful_inputs": 3,
  "failed_inputs": 0,
  "raw_results_found": 240,
  "results_saved": 100,
  "duplicates_removed": 20,
  "filtered_out": 120,
  "charged_events": 100,
  "blocked_requests": 0,
  "retry_count": 0,
  "runtime_seconds": 180,
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-07T00:00:00.000Z"
}

charged_events always equals results_saved for the weak-profile-result event.

---

🚧 Limitations (V1)

• Cards-only extraction: V1 reads each business row directly from the search results panel and does not click into individual place detail panels. Phone, website, full opening hours, and place_id only appear when Google surfaces them on the card itself; otherwise these fields are empty/null.
• No website crawling, email extraction, or social link extraction.
• No full review text or sentiment.
• No photos, menus, prices, or popular times.
• No login/cookie/session-based scraping.
• Address parsing into city/state/postcode is best-effort; the full address field is the source of truth.
• Per-query hard cap is 500 results; per-run hard cap is 5,000 results.

---

🛠️ Technical notes

• Stack: Node.js 22 · Apify SDK 3 · Crawlee · Puppeteer.
• Concurrency: min=1, max=3 (conservative to reduce blocking).
• Memory: 1 GB min · 2 GB default · 4 GB max.
• Proxy: Apify Proxy enabled by default (datacenter). Apify Residential is rejected at startup — use Custom proxy URLs (IPRoyal / BrightData / Oxylabs) if you need residential routing. See the Proxy policy section above.
• Diagnostics: On the first failed render (no feed, or feed but zero cards), the actor saves the page HTML and URL to the key-value store as debug-no-feed-html / debug-zero-cards-html.