Clay and Google Maps: what Clay's Maps source does, where it stops, and how to import a full local list

Clay can pull businesses from Google Maps with its built-in Google Maps source: you pick a business type, a location and a radius, and each business lands in a table as a row with its name, address, phone, website, category, rating and Place ID. Clay's own guide says the source returns up to 1,000 results by default and doesn't include emails or owner names, so you enrich those separately, and rows without a website have nothing to enrich from. Teams that need every business in an area, or checked emails before enrichment spend, often build the list outside Clay and import it as a CSV or through a webhook table. Both routes are below, as of November 2026.

What does Clay's Google Maps source actually do?#

It runs a Google Maps search from inside a Clay table and writes one row per business. According to Clay's guide on scraping Google Maps for leads, you add a Google Maps source to a table, choose a location (a city, a neighborhood or an exact address, adjustable on the map) and a radius, and pick a business type.

Clay recommends choosing the business type from Google's own category list rather than typing free text. Its example: picking "Dentists" from Google's categories returns cleaner results than a typed keyword.

What each row contains, per the same guide:

Clay describes the output as structured but not clean. That's a fair summary of any Maps pull: the website column needs cleaning before an email finder can use it.

What are the limits of Clay's Google Maps source?#

There are four limits worth planning around: a default result ceiling, no emails, no enrichment for businesses without a website, and table size.

1. Result ceiling. Clay's guide says the integration "returns up to 1,000 results and keeps loading", and Clay University's lesson calls 1,000 the default max limit. The first count you see can be well below the final total, so wait for loading to finish before judging coverage.
2. No emails or owners. Maps listings don't carry them. Every email in a Clay Maps table comes from a later enrichment step, which spends credits.
3. Businesses without a website. Clay's claybook for turning Google Maps listings into a target account list says it plainly: "Not all Google Maps businesses have a website, in which case the enrichment won't run for these specific rows." Domain-based email finding has nothing to start from.
4. Rows per table. Clay's pricing page lists 200 rows per table on the Free plan and 50,000 on Launch, as of November 2026. A 1,000-business pull doesn't fit in a Free table at all.

Clay's community forum has several threads from users asking how to get more local businesses than one source run returns. The usual answer is to run more sources with different locations or keywords into the same table. That works, but you then own the deduplication: the same dentist shows up in overlapping radius searches. Dedupe on Place ID, not on name or phone.

The same problem exists on Google Maps itself, where one search shows only about 120 places. Our guide to the Google Maps 120-results limit explains why, and how splitting an area into smaller searches recovers the businesses one search misses.

Why do people source Google Maps leads outside Clay?#

Mostly because Clay is an orchestration layer, and the list itself is the expensive, fiddly part. Clay is very good at what happens after you have rows: waterfalls across enrichment providers, AI research columns, scoring, routing to a sequencer or CRM. Getting every business in a territory, once, with a usable email, is a separate job.

Even Clay's own claybook for local lists doesn't use the native source. Its template pulls listings with Serper.dev, a Google search API (the claybook notes Serper's first 2,500 queries are free), then uses Claygent to find owners from each website and a waterfall to find work emails.

Reasons teams bring the list in from elsewhere:

• Completeness. A whole metro or county, searched in smaller pieces and deduplicated, instead of one capped pull per run.
• Area and trade precision. Only businesses inside the territory you sell into and in the trade you searched for, so you don't spend enrichment on a row that should never have been there.
• Emails before enrichment spend. Many local businesses publish an email address on their own site: in our measurements about 54% of business websites give one up (found, before verification). Finding and verifying those first means Clay only enriches the rows that still need work.
• Cost predictability. Clay charges Actions for platform work and Data Credits for marketplace data. A list that arrives already deduplicated and filtered uses fewer of both. Our breakdown of what Clay costs for a local list runs the numbers.

Leadraft is built for that first job: the complete, deduplicated list of businesses in an area, with emails found on each business's own website and checked before anything reaches Clay. It doesn't do Clay's job of waterfalls, AI research columns and routing, so the two sit side by side.

How do I import a Google Maps lead list into Clay with a CSV?#

Upload the file as a new table or into an existing one, map the columns, then decide whether enrichments run on import. Clay's CSV import docs give these steps:

1. Open the source panel. For a new table, go to your workspace home, click + Create new and search for "CSV". For an existing table, open it, click Tools, then Import.
2. Upload the file with Browse files or drag and drop.
3. Choose a destination: Add to current table, Create new table, or Replace current table.
4. Map the columns to the table's fields.
5. Choose whether to run enrichments: "Save and run rows in this CSV" runs them now; "Save and don't run" imports without spending anything on enrichment.

Pick "Save and don't run" the first time. Filter and dedupe in the table, then run enrichment on the rows that need it.

Before you upload:

• Comma-separated, UTF-8. A file saved with semicolons as separators imports into the wrong columns; re-export it as a standard CSV.
• Keep the Place ID column. It's the dedupe key if you import more files later.
• Keep the email grade. It lets you skip email enrichment on rows that already have a verified address.
• Check the row cap. 200 rows per table on Free, 50,000 on Launch, per Clay's pricing page as of November 2026. Split big lists by city or category.

A useful mapping from a Leadraft CSV (Full layout) to Clay columns:

Can I send leads to Clay automatically instead of uploading files?#

Yes, with a Clay webhook table, as long as each lead arrives as its own request. Clay's webhook docs: in a workbook, click + Add, search for "Webhooks" and choose Monitor webhook, then copy the URL into the app that will send data. Clay receives HTTP POST requests in JSON. You can add an authentication token that goes in the request header; Clay shows it once.

Two Clay rules to plan around, from the same page:

• A webhook source accepts 50,000 submissions, and deleting rows doesn't reset the count. After that you create a new webhook, unless you're on Enterprise with auto-delete (passthrough) tables.
• Rows that arrive by webhook still count toward the table's row limit for your plan.

Leadraft has no native Clay connector, so the automatic route goes through a tool in the middle:

Clay's webhook docs don't say how a JSON array in one request is handled, so split batches before they reach Clay. In n8n that's a Split Out node, in Make an Iterator, in Zapier the Looping step. Leadraft's webhook docs note that a batch can arrive twice on retry, so check Place ID in Clay before running paid enrichment on a new row.

A monitor makes this a standing pipeline: it repeats a search on a schedule and sends only businesses that weren't there before. New businesses in your territory reach Clay without anyone exporting a file.

How does Leadraft fit into a Clay workflow?#

Leadraft builds the list; Clay works on it after import. The table below shows what Leadraft does at each step, and where the work belongs to Clay.

If the end goal is a cold email campaign and you don't need Claygent research, Clay may be a step you don't need. Leads can go straight into Instantly, Smartlead or lemlist with the email grade attached.

On the legal side: Google's Maps terms restrict scraping and building lists from Maps content, whichever tool runs the search. Business listings are public business data, but a named person's email is personal data in many places, and cold email has its own rules. Our guide to whether scraping Google Maps is legal covers the distinctions; for anything beyond that, get legal advice for your market.

FAQ#

Can Clay scrape Google Maps?#

Clay has a Google Maps source you add to a table: you pick a business type from Google's category list, set a location and radius, and each business comes back as a row with name, address, phone, website, category, rating, review count and Place ID. Clay's own guide says it returns up to 1,000 results by default.

Does Clay's Google Maps source give you emails?#

No. Clay's guide says Google Maps doesn't provide owner names or email addresses, so you add enrichment columns to find them, usually from the business's website domain. Rows without a website have nothing to enrich from.

How many results does Clay's Google Maps source return?#

Up to 1,000 results by default, according to Clay's guide and Clay University, and the count keeps growing while it loads. For a big metro and a broad category, run several searches with smaller locations and dedupe on Place ID.

How do I import a Google Maps lead list into Clay?#

Upload a CSV: from your workspace click + Create new and search for CSV, or open a table, click Tools, then Import. Map the columns, then choose whether to run enrichments now or save without running. For a continuous flow, send rows to a Clay webhook table instead.

Is there a native Leadraft integration for Clay?#

No. Leadraft has no Clay connector. You bring Leadraft leads into Clay with a CSV export, or by sending a Leadraft webhook or JSON feed through Zapier, Make or n8n to a Clay webhook, one lead per request.

Sources#

1. Clay, How to scrape Google Maps for leads (inputs, fields, 1,000-result default, website cleanup, no emails or owners).
2. Clay University, Find local businesses using Google Maps (1,000 results default max limit).
3. Clay University, Turn Google Maps listings into a target account list with contacts and emails (Serper.dev template, no enrichment without a website, 50,000-row tables).
4. Clay, Pricing (rows per table by plan, Actions and Data Credits), checked November 2026.
5. Clay University, CSV import overview.
6. Clay University, Webhook integration docs (Monitor webhook, JSON POST, auth token, 50,000 submissions).
7. Leadraft, Webhooks and Live feeds.