TL;DR
Google Maps data export to CSV breaks in predictable ways — encoding corruption garbles business names, coordinate fields vanish, and special characters cause silent data loss. Fixing these errors requires UTF-8 encoding, geocoding workarounds, and proper CSV formatting.
Extract Data Website
I once spent three hours staring at a CSV where every Turkish business name looked like a cat walked across a keyboard. "Teşvikiye" became "TeÅŸvikiye." When you extract data website listings from Google Maps, encoding corruption is the first enemy you hit. The root cause is a mismatch between how your export tool writes the file and how your spreadsheet reads it — UTF-8 versus legacy encoding like Windows-1252. A GitHub issue on google-maps-scraper documents how foreign characters get mangled during export. The fix: open the CSV in a text editor, re-save as UTF-8 with BOM, and characters restore. For bulk exports, configure your tool to output UTF-8 explicitly. If you deal with common export errors at scale, encoding validation should be your first quality gate.
Google Scraping Tool
What happens when your google scraping tool silently drops fields? This missing-fields problem is more insidious than encoding corruption because you do not notice gaps until mid-outreach. Google Maps does not expose email addresses, owner names, revenue data, or social media profiles — those fields simply do not exist in listings. A 2026 MapsLeads reference confirms that email extraction requires visiting each business website and scanning contact pages. Treat absent fields as "not listed" rather than "confirmed none," then run a website-crawling pass. LeadsAgent handles this automatically — the agent visits business websites, scans for publicly displayed emails, and appends them to your export. When choosing a scraping tool, prioritize modular enrichment so you only spend credits on fields you actually need.
Instead of cobbling together separate tools for scraping and enrichment, you can try LeadsAgent free — it handles the full pipeline from Maps search to verified spreadsheet in one pass.
Scrape Info From Website
When you scrape info from website listings, the data you get is only as good as the encoding you preserve it in. Google Maps exports coordinates as decimal degrees, but many tools export them as text strings. A QGIS troubleshooting guide explains that when coordinates arrive as text, mapping applications cannot interpret them, and points cluster at (0, 0) in the Gulf of Guinea. The CSV standard does not enforce types — it is just text. Your lat/lng columns might import as strings in one application and numbers in another. Before importing, verify coordinate columns contain plain decimal numbers (45.5231, not 45° 31' 23.16" N). Special characters in headers can cause parsers to treat the entire file as a single column. For a deeper walkthrough, check our educational guide on data extraction fundamentals.
Data Scraping Tools
Batch export optimization with data scraping tools is where people lose their minds. Running 60 searches across 20 cities should not feel like defusing a bomb, but Google Maps enforces a 92–120 result cap per search. The solution: divide your target area into a grid of 2–5 km cells, extract per cell, then deduplicate using Place ID — the only field guaranteed unique per business. A 2026 best-practices guide recommends maintaining a master list with Place IDs and cross-referencing before every campaign. Define scope, plan your grid, preview cells, extract by priority, deduplicate, then export to CRM. For agencies managing multiple clients, this prevents duplicate-creep and cost-spiral. Explore more in our tools section.
Extracting Data From a Web Page
When extracting data from a web page, the coordinate-ordering trap wastes an entire afternoon. GeoJSON uses [longitude, latitude] order — x, y — not latitude, longitude. A Takeout Tools guide documents that points on the wrong continent means X and Y are swapped. For CSV imports, verify X is longitude (negative for western longitudes) and Y is latitude. There is also a zero-coordinate bug where places export as [0, 0] — off West Africa. This happens when Google lacks stored coordinates for older saves. The place appears but is geographically useless until geocoded or processed through a tool that detects invalid coordinates.
| Error Type | Symptom | Quick Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Encoding corruption | Garbled business names | Re-save CSV as UTF-8 with BOM |
| Missing coordinates | Empty lat/lng columns | Run geocoding on addresses |
| Coordinate swap | Points on wrong continent | Set X=longitude, Y=latitude |
| Text-as-number coords | Mapping tools cannot plot | Convert columns from text to number |
| Special char headers | File parses as one column | Rename headers without special chars |
| Dropped Pin names | Places show as "Waypoint 001" | Rename pins before exporting |
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why does my CSV export show garbled characters?
The tool likely saved in legacy encoding instead of UTF-8. Open in Notepad++ and re-save with UTF-8 encoding. This restores accented characters and non-Latin scripts.
Q: How do I get email addresses from Google Maps exports?
Google Maps does not display emails. You need a secondary step — a tool that crawls each business website for publicly displayed contact emails, or manual research.
Q: Why are my exported coordinates appearing at (0, 0)?
This is a known Google export bug. The fix is geocoding — running the business name or address through a geocoding service to recover coordinates automatically.
Q: Can I export more than 120 results per search?
No — Google Maps enforces roughly 92–120 results per query. Divide the area into a grid of smaller cells, extract per cell, then deduplicate using Place ID.
Q: What is the best deduplication key for exported data?
Use Place ID — it is the only field guaranteed unique per business. Names and phone numbers collide across chain locations. Use Remove Duplicates on the Place ID column.
Q: How often should I refresh export data?
Re-extract quarterly for active campaigns. Business data changes — phones disconnect, websites go offline. Stale data wastes outreach and damages sender reputation.
Q: Is scraping Google Maps data safe for lead generation?
Scraping publicly displayed business information is generally acceptable for B2B outreach. Avoid scraping review text or personal data. Respect rate limits.
Q: What CSV format works best for CRM imports?
Save as UTF-8 CSV with headers (business_name, address, phone, website, email, latitude, longitude). Normalize phone numbers to E.164 format.
Ready to stop fighting broken exports? Download LeadsAgent — describe the leads you need, let the agent handle extraction, and grab a structured spreadsheet with verified contact data. No coding, no encoding headaches.
