# What is grid search? Definition and examples · Leadraft

URL: https://leadraft.co/glossary/grid-search
Summary: Grid search (tiling) splits an area into small tiles and searches each one, to get past the result limits of a single Google Maps search.

Glossary · Google Maps & local data · Last updated October 31, 2026

# Grid search

Grid search (tiling) splits an area into small tiles and searches each one, to get past the result limits of a single Google Maps search.

**Also called:** Tiling, Grid scraping, Tiled search.

One Google Maps search shows a limited number of results, often cited as about 120, and the official Places API Text Search returns at most 60 results per query. In a big city, that's a fraction of the businesses in a trade. Grid search covers the area in pieces so each search is local to a small tile.

The method: divide the area into tiles sized to the density of businesses, run every keyword in every tile, and merge the results. Dense downtown areas need smaller tiles than suburbs. Results overlap between neighboring tiles, so you need deduplication on the Place ID.

The trade-off is cost and time. A city might need hundreds or thousands of searches per keyword. Combining it with a good keyword list (category names plus synonyms) matters as much as the tiles: grid search finds more of the businesses that match a keyword, and keywords decide which businesses can match at all.

Coverage is never guaranteed. It depends on the keywords, how Google files each business, and how fine the grid is. Measure it by comparing against a plain search.

## Example

A single search for "coffee shop" in Portland returned 230 businesses in our measured run; a tiled search of the same city and keyword found 457. That's one city and one keyword, so treat it as an illustration, not a rule.

## In Leadraft

Leadraft tiles every search past Google's result cap, runs every keyword in every tile, and dedupes on the Place ID. The [coverage methodology](https://leadraft.co/methodology/coverage) shows the measured runs and their caveats.

## Sources

1.  1.[Google for Developers, Text Search (New)](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/text-search)
2.  2.[Leadraft, Coverage methodology](https://leadraft.co/methodology/coverage)

## Related terms

-   [Polygon searchA polygon search finds businesses inside a shape you draw on a map, instead of a city name or a radius, so the results match your exact territory.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/polygon-search)
-   [Google Places APIThe Google Places API is Google's official, paid API for searching places and getting details like name, address, phone, website, hours and ratings.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/google-places-api)
-   [DeduplicationDeduplication is finding and merging records that describe the same business or person, so each appears once in a list.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/deduplication)
-   [Total addressable marketTotal addressable market (TAM) is the total number of potential customers for an offer, or the revenue they represent, in the markets you can serve.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/total-addressable-market)

## Further reading

-   [Google Maps 120-result limit](https://leadraft.co/blog/google-maps-120-results-limit)
-   [Coverage methodology](https://leadraft.co/methodology/coverage)

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Last built: 2026-11-09