This project provides a free, open-source tool for scraping data from Google Maps, targeting lead generation and market research. It offers both command-line and web UI interfaces, allowing users to extract detailed business information such as names, addresses, ratings, reviews, contact details, and geographic coordinates, with an option to extract emails by visiting business websites.

How It Works

The scraper utilizes the scrapemate web crawling framework and can be run via Docker or as a compiled binary. It supports configurable concurrency, proxy usage (SOCKS5/HTTP/HTTPS), and offers a "Fast Mode" for quicker, albeit less detailed, data retrieval by limiting results per query. For scalability, it integrates with PostgreSQL via docker-compose and supports deployment on Kubernetes, enabling distributed scraping.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Install/Run: Via Docker (docker run ...) or compile from source (go build).
• Prerequisites: Docker recommended for ease of use. For building from source: Go toolchain.
• Setup: Docker setup is minimal. Building from source requires go mod download.
• Docs: https://github.com/gosom/google-maps-scraper

Highlighted Details

• Extracts over 30 data points, including user reviews and CID.
• Supports CSV, JSON, and PostgreSQL output formats, with custom exporter plugin capability.
• Offers a RESTful API for managing scraping jobs programmatically.
• Experimental AWS Lambda support for serverless execution.

Maintenance & Community

The project is community-supported, with mentions of sponsors like SerpApi and Evomi. Contributions are welcomed via issues and pull requests.

Licensing & Compatibility

• License: MIT License.
• Compatibility: Permissive MIT license allows commercial use and linking with closed-source projects.

Limitations & Caveats

Fast Mode is in Beta and may experience blocking. Email extraction significantly increases processing time. The README notes that the scraper requires CPU and memory due to headless browser usage, especially for Kubernetes deployments.