How our lead samples & estimates work
By Doug Nielsen, Product Manager · Published
Each of the 6,480 pages under /leads pairs a business category with a city (20 categories, 324 cities in 5 countries). It shows two different kinds of number: an estimate of how many of those businesses Google Maps lists there, and, on 6,473 of the pages, a sample of real businesses from our own Google Maps runs. This page explains how both are made and where they fall short.
The samples
Every sample comes from Hubertino's own scraper, the engine customers run, searching Google Maps for the category in that city and keeping the results in the order Maps ranks them:
- • 5,816 pages: one city-wide search, up to the first 10 results.
- • 463 pages, in the first US cities we covered: one search in a single zip code, up to the first 20 results.
- • 194 pages: the search run in up to 3 zip or postcode areas spread across the city, merged rank by rank (each area's first result, then each area's second, and so on) and cut at 30 businesses, so the sample isn't just the few blocks one search centres on. Their captions list the areas.
Before a sample is shown, a business listed twice (same name, phone and street) keeps one row, while branches of a chain that share a phone but sit on different streets stay separate. Review counts that are clearly misread, such as a phone number or the star rating glued onto the count, are hidden rather than shown.
The first results aren't a random draw: they lean towards the listings Google ranks highest. Read a sample's percentages as describing those businesses, not every business in the city. The samples on the site were taken between July 2026 and September 2026; each page's caption gives its own month.
The estimate
The “~1,300 dentists” figure is a model, not a count: the city's population × how many of that business there are per 1,000 residents × a country factor.
- • Density: rough US national averages per category (table below). About 270,000 US hair salons for about 330 million people, for example, is roughly 0.8 per 1,000.
- • Country factor: 1 for the US, 0.9 for Canada and Australia, 0.8 for the UK and 0.7 for Germany. It is our judgement that Google Maps coverage and per-capita business counts run lower outside North America, not a measured figure.
- • Population: approximate city-proper figures (the metro area for Australian capitals).
- • Rounding: two significant figures (~1,900, not 1,894). At 20 or below the model only says “small”: those pages show ~20 and leave the count out of their title. Other titles write the estimate as “1,900+”; it is the same estimate, not a guaranteed minimum.
How far off it can be: checked against counted totals on a third-party business-data site in September 2026, our dentist estimates for the three US cities we checked came out about three times too low (Anaheim: ~190 against 626 listed), and Los Angeles restaurants about 40% too high (~8,600 against 6,154). Use it to size a market, not to plan a campaign. A scrape delivers whatever Google Maps actually lists, and you pay per business delivered.
| Category | Per 1,000 residents (US) |
|---|---|
| Dentist | 0.55 |
| Plumber | 0.36 |
| Electrician | 0.3 |
| Roofing contractor | 0.25 |
| HVAC contractor | 0.3 |
| Real estate agent | 1.2 |
| Restaurant | 2.2 |
| Hair salon | 0.85 |
| Chiropractor | 0.21 |
| Gym | 0.35 |
| Coffee shop | 0.24 |
| Law firm | 0.9 |
| Auto repair shop | 0.85 |
| Landscaper | 0.5 |
| Med spa | 0.06 |
| Accountant | 0.4 |
| Veterinarian | 0.1 |
| Physical therapist | 0.25 |
| Nail salon | 0.45 |
| Moving company | 0.15 |
Emails
For a business whose Google listing links a website, the scraper reads that site's homepage (in a real browser when the page needs JavaScript) and, if no address is there, up to two of the site's own contact, about or Impressum pages, looking for a published contact email and social profiles. It doesn't guess addresses or buy them from a database. Addresses that aren't the business's own (template placeholders, font-licence credits, the inboxes of website builders and booking platforms) are filtered out before a sample is shown. Some samples were taken without the email step; their pages make no claim about emails.
On these public pages every email is masked to its first character (j***@domain.com). Full addresses appear only in a customer's own export.
Which pages search engines see
A page asks to be indexed only when its sample is real data about its subject: at least 5 businesses after the cleaning above, and at least 40% of them listed on Google under the page's category or a close synonym (a “med spa” sample that is mostly day spas fails). Pages without a sample, or that fail, stay available with a noindex tag and are left out of the sitemap.
How often samples change
Not on a fixed schedule. When a page's sample is taken again, the table and the month in its caption change with it.
If your business is in a sample
You can ask for it to be corrected or removed; here's how to reach us.