Get regional business information via google maps?
April 4, 2010 2:38 PM   Subscribe

I would like to use Google Maps / Yellow Pages / some other directory service to get rough statistics about business categories in an area.

For example, lets say I wanted to find out the relative concentrations of different manufacturing categories in Scranton PA. I go to Google Maps, get the area I want to search on the map, and search for "manufacturers". Under each result there is a convenient line that says "Category: ", then, for example, "Tire Manufacturers". I can copy all the results on a page to Excel, filter for those category lines, sort them, and get a rough idea of the frequency of each category. Unfortunately there may be thousands of results for a given area, and I can only copy one page at a time. Is there any way I can get these results in a more convenient format?

Alternatively... are there any other ways of obtaining this kind information through a public directory type service? I'm specifically looking for alternatives to official data (from say the BLS).
posted by whataboutben to Society & Culture
 
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