How to Search Google Maps Places by Keyword

Searching Google Maps manually works for a few places, but it quickly becomes slow when you need structured business data for local SEO, market research, sales prospecting, or competitor analysis. If you want to search Google Maps places by keyword and use the results in your own dashboard, spreadsheet, or database, Pullbay gives you a simple API endpoint for programmatic place search.

This guide shows how to use Pullbay’s Google Maps Place Search endpoint to search by free-text query, optionally bias results toward a country, language, or map viewport, and handle larger result sets with maxItems or offset pagination.

The Challenge of Keyword-Based Google Maps Search

Google Maps search is useful because people search in natural language: “pizza near soho new york”, “best dentist in berlin”, or “coffee shop kadikoy”. But when you are doing research at scale, copying listings manually is not practical.

Pullbay’s Google Maps API lets you search places with a free-text query and returns structured fields such as place name, address, website, phone, rating, review count, categories, location, Google Maps URL, and FID.

Endpoint

GET https://api.pullbay.com/google-maps/place/search

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Required Parameter

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
query	string	Yes	Free-text search term, 1–200 characters

Optional Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
countryCode	string	Country or region bias, 2–5 characters
languageCode	string	Language code for localized text, 2–10 characters
latitude	string	Latitude to center the search viewport
longitude	string	Longitude to center the search viewport
zoom	string	Map zoom level to use with latitude and longitude
offset	string	Offset-style pagination value
maxItems	integer	One-shot bulk pull, 1–500 results

offset and maxItems are mutually exclusive. Use one or the other in a request.

Approach 1: Simple Keyword Search with maxItems

Use maxItems when you want a simple one-shot pull of places matching a keyword.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"

BASE_URL = "https://api.pullbay.com"

headers = {

"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"

}

params = {

"query": "pizza near soho new york",

"countryCode": "us",

"languageCode": "en",

"maxItems": 20

}

response = requests.get(

f"{BASE_URL}/google-maps/place/search",

headers=headers,

params=params

)

response.raise_for_status()

data = response.json()

places = data.get("data", [])

credits = data.get("pricing", {}).get("creditsCharged")

print(f"Fetched {len(places)} places")

print(f"Credits charged: {credits}")

for place in places:

print(place.get("title"))

print(place.get("address"))

print(place.get("totalScore"), place.get("reviewsCount"))

print(place.get("url"))

print("---")

When to use this

Use this approach when you need up to 500 results in a single request and do not need to process results page by page.

Approach 2: Location-Biased Search with Latitude, Longitude, and Zoom

If you want to bias search results toward a specific map viewport, pass latitude, longitude, and zoom.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"

BASE_URL = "https://api.pullbay.com"

headers = {

"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"

}

params = {

"query": "coffee shops",

"countryCode": "us",

"languageCode": "en",

"latitude": "40.730610",

"longitude": "-73.935242",

"zoom": "13",

"maxItems": 50

}

response = requests.get(

f"{BASE_URL}/google-maps/place/search",

headers=headers,

params=params

)

response.raise_for_status()

data = response.json()

for place in data.get("data", []):

print({

"title": place.get("title"),

"address": place.get("address"),

"rating": place.get("totalScore"),

"reviews": place.get("reviewsCount"),

"fid": place.get("fid"),

"url": place.get("url")

})

When to use this

Use viewport parameters when your keyword is broad and you want results biased toward a specific area.

Approach 3: Offset Pagination

Use offset when you want to process results in batches. The response includes pagination.offset. For this endpoint, increment the offset by the number of items received.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"

BASE_URL = "https://api.pullbay.com"

headers = {

"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"

}

query = "restaurants in brooklyn"

offset = 0

all_places = []

while True:

params = {

"query": query,

"countryCode": "us",

"languageCode": "en",

"offset": str(offset)

}

response = requests.get(

f"{BASE_URL}/google-maps/place/search",

headers=headers,

params=params

)

response.raise_for_status()

data = response.json()

places = data.get("data", [])

if not places:

break

all_places.extend(places)

print(f"Fetched {len(places)} places at offset {offset}")

offset += len(places)

print(f"Total places fetched: {len(all_places)}")

When to use this

Use offset pagination when you want to process results incrementally instead of requesting a larger one-shot result set.

Useful Fields in the Search Response

A place search result can include fields such as:

Field	Description
title	Place name
url	Google Maps URL for the place
address	Full formatted address
location.lat / location.lng	Latitude and longitude
website	Place website URL
phone	Formatted phone number
totalScore	Average rating
reviewsCount	Total number of reviews
categories	Place category labels
openingHours	Opening hours per weekday
fid	Feature ID used for the Get Place endpoint
placeId	Google Place ID

Credit Considerations

Each request returns the exact credit charge in:

data["pricing"]["creditsCharged"]

Credit cost is dynamic. Do not hardcode a flat cost per endpoint or per result. Always read the value from the response.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Possible Cause	Fix
400 Bad request	Missing or invalid parameter	Check query, offset, maxItems, and geo parameter formats
402 Insufficient credits	Your account does not have enough credits	Check your Pullbay account credits
404 Not found	No matching place or review set found	Try a different query or location bias
Empty result set	Query may be too narrow	Broaden the keyword or remove viewport parameters
Invalid pagination behavior	offset and maxItems used together	Use only one pagination mode per request

Next Steps

After you can search Google Maps places by keyword, you can:

• Use each result’s fid to fetch full place details

• Use each result’s url to fetch reviews

• Store search results in a database for local SEO analysis

• Compare competitors by rating, review count, category, and location