Use case Leads and enquiries
Find the businesses that need you
If you sell websites, listing photos or Google Business Profile work to local trades, the finding is the slow part. You search a trade and a town, then open ninety listings one at a time looking for the dozen with no website, a link that no longer loads, or thirty reviews nobody ever answered. This does that pass for you and hands back a ranked list with the reason already written.
The question this page answers
How do I find local businesses with no website or a neglected Google listing, and what do I say to them?
How the working version is put together
Search the way a customer does
One search term and a town, exactly as you would type them into Google Maps. The listings come from the Google Maps Scraper on Apify, which runs on your own account and is billed there on top of my fee. If you already scraped the places earlier, paste those records in and I score them without running a new search.
Read the listing, then knock on the website
From the listing I take the website and the phone number. I also note the photo count, the star rating and review count, and whether opening hours and a description are filled in. Then I make one plain request to whatever website it points at. No browser, no clicking: enough to know whether the link works at all, whether it is served over https, and whether it carries a mobile viewport tag.
Tell a real site from a stand-in
A listing whose only web address is a Facebook page, an Instagram profile or a Google-built page is scored as having no site of its own, because that is what it means to a customer. A domain that does not resolve, a server that refuses, an expired certificate: each of those is named in words rather than as an error code, because the reason is going into an email.
Score it out of 100
Web presence is worth 35, review engagement 18, photos 12, staleness 12, website quality 10, and what the listing is missing 13. The lines add to exactly 100. Anything at 55 or more is HOT, 30 to 54 is WARM, the rest is COLD. Every row carries the lines that fired with the numbers behind them, so you can see why a business scored what it did rather than taking the total on trust.
Write the reason as a sentence
Up to three pitch angles per business, one sentence each, built only from that row's own numbers. Not one of the last five reviews has a reply from the business. The Google listing has one photo on it. The website on the listing does not load. Plain on purpose, because the specific detail earns the reply.
What thirty Stockport plumbers scored
The first real run searched plumber in Stockport and scored thirty listings: seven HOT and four WARM, with the other nineteen COLD. Seven of the thirty carry no website at all. The top row was a gas engineer at 79 with no site, one photo, five reviews the owner never answered and nothing new in thirty-five months. Two more had a Facebook page as their only link. One company with a hundred and fourteen reviews and thirty-eight photos scored 50, WARM, because the website on its listing does not load, which is a better opening line than anything I could invent.
The nineteen COLD rows are the honest half. A plumber with a live, secure site and answered reviews scores near zero, and that is the tool being right rather than the tool being generous. The Maps search ran through the Google Maps Scraper on my own Apify account, the same way it runs on yours, and the whole run cost about a cent plus twenty cents of Maps fees.
What stale actually means here
Google does not publish when a listing was last edited, so staleness is read from what it does publish: how long ago the newest review was left, and whether the owner has replied to any of the recent ones. A listing with no reviews at all scores the full staleness points, because there is no sign of anyone home.
The owner-reply rate is measured on the recent reviews you asked me to read, five by default, not on every review the business ever had. Ask for five and the number describes those five. That is a smaller claim than it could be and I would rather make the smaller one.
Photos, with a caveat
A photo count of zero is read straight off the listing. Google sometimes attaches photos from other sources to a business that has uploaded none itself, which can make the count look healthier than the owner's own effort. So the photos line is worth 12 rather than 30, and it is never the only reason a business lands in HOT.
What it costs to run
One cent per business scored, charged whether or not it clears the minimum score you set, because the work was done either way. The Google Maps Scraper charges your account separately, around two thirds of a cent per place with five reviews read at the entry tier. A hundred plumbers in one town costs about a dollar and a half all in, and comes back sorted.
Read this before you spend anything
When I would tell you not to bother
This is a first pass, not a website audit. One plain request tells you the link is dead or insecure. For how old a site looks inside, what fires before consent and how it scores on accessibility, run the Website Redesign Lead Scorer over the sites this one finds.
None of it is a judgement about the business. It describes what its public listing showed on the day I read it, and a good tradesperson with a bad listing is exactly the person worth writing to.
If your Apify account is on Apify's Creator plan, which cannot run other people's Actors, the search step will fail with a message saying so. The paste-your-own-places path still works, because it makes no call out.
What lands on your desk
- One row per business: score out of 100 and a HOT, WARM or COLD band
- The listing's contact details beside every signal the score was built from
- Every rubric line that fired, with its numbers
- Up to three pitch angles written as sentences from that row alone
- A run summary with the band counts, how many had no website, and the ten highest scores
- If you want the HOT rows flowing into a CRM with a first email drafted per business, that is the work I do
Open the proof
Published case studies of systems that are running. Each links to the thing itself.
Other builds in this cluster
Same pattern, each one aimed at a different part of the business and linking to its own page.
Questions this page answers
- Where do the businesses come from?
- From a Google Maps search run through the Google Maps Scraper on Apify, on your own account. Or from place records you already have, pasted in, which makes no call out at all.
- What does the score measure?
- Six lines that add to 100: web presence 35, review engagement 18, photos 12, staleness 12, website quality 10, and what the listing is missing 13. HOT is 55 and above, WARM is 30 to 54.
- How do you know a listing is stale?
- Google does not publish an edit date, so I read the age of the newest review and whether the owner replies to recent ones. A listing with no reviews at all scores the full staleness points.
- Does it open the websites?
- One plain request each, no browser. Enough to know whether the link loads, whether it is https, and whether it has a mobile viewport tag. Switch it off for a faster listing-only pass.
- What does it cost?
- One cent per business scored. The Google Maps Scraper bills your account separately for the search, around two thirds of a cent per place at the entry tier with five reviews read.
- Have you run it on real towns?
- It has. Plumber in Stockport, thirty listings, seven HOT and seven with no website at all, and the top rows are on this page. The whole run cost about a cent of my fee plus twenty cents of Google Maps Scraper fees on my own Apify account.
Want this built and handed over working?
One line is enough to start. You get an honest answer on fit, and a number rather than a discovery call.
Start a brief