Scrape Google Maps, or query the register?
It is everybody's reflex: a list of local businesses is something you pull off Google Maps. It works, until the day it stops — and the real question is not whether it is feasible, but what you are allowed to keep afterwards.
| SIRENE register | Google Maps | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | SIRENE, the legal record of every French business. | The business profiles Google chooses to display. |
| Status of the data | Public data under Licence Ouverte 2.0, reusable including commercially. | A third party's content, whose automated extraction its terms of service forbid. |
| What you may keep | Everything, with no time limit. | Nothing lasting for Places fields, except the place identifier. |
| Completeness | Everything registered, including businesses with no online presence at all. | Whatever Google has listed: a shop with no profile is invisible. |
| Freshness | Legal filings, with the administrative lag. | Often more current on real activity: hours, closures. |
| Reviews and ratings | Absent from the register. | Precisely what you went there for. |
| Cost | Zero, no key. | Free to scrape, but with proxies, blocks and permanent maintenance; paid through the official API. |
| Risk | None. | IP blocking, account termination, and a contractual disagreement with Google. |
The blind spot of scraping
A business with no Google profile does not exist for a scraper. Which is exactly the profile you are looking for: the one with nothing online. Starting from Google, you methodically build a list of prospects who are already equipped, and you never see the ones who need you most.
- The register first SIRENE gives the legal existence, the address and the activity code of everything registered. It is complete by construction, it is free, and the state's API does not even ask for a key.
- Google second, and officially Reviews, opening hours and phone numbers exist nowhere else. The official Places API hands them over cleanly — at the price of a key, an invoice, and the obligation not to keep them.
- What Towncenter does Exactly that order. The sector fills from SIRENE; Google enrichment is optional, goes through the official API, and the fields involved are purged after 30 days as the terms require.
What gets asked most.
Can you scrape Google Maps for prospecting?
Technically yes, contractually no: Google's terms of service forbid automated extraction of Maps content, and the official Places API forbids storing most of the fields it returns beyond a short window, with the exception of the place identifier. The French SIRENE register, by contrast, is public data under Licence Ouverte 2.0, reusable without restriction including commercially, and it also covers the businesses that have no Google profile at all.
Does the SIRENE register replace Google Maps for prospecting?
Not entirely. SIRENE gives the legal existence, address and activity of every registered establishment, including those with no online presence — which makes it the better starting point. It contains no reviews, no opening hours and no phone numbers. Those fields come from Google Places, through its official API, and cannot be kept indefinitely.