# What is polygon search? Definition and examples · Leadraft

URL: https://leadraft.co/glossary/polygon-search
Summary: A 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.

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

# Polygon search

A 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.

**Also called:** Draw-on-map search, Custom area search, Geofenced search.

Sales territories rarely follow city limits. A service area might be three suburbs and half a county, or everything east of a river. A polygon search lets you draw that shape and search inside it.

The shape does two jobs. It decides where to search, because the area is broken into smaller pieces that each get their own searches. And it decides what to keep: businesses whose coordinates fall outside the polygon are flagged or dropped, even if a search near the edge returned them.

That second job is where most lists go wrong. Searches near a boundary always pull in neighbors, so a list for "Scottsdale" often contains Phoenix and Tempe businesses. Checking each result's latitude and longitude against the polygon is the only way to be sure.

Polygons can be drawn by hand, built from a radius around a point, or imported from a KML file exported from Google Earth or a GIS tool.

## Example

A pest control company draws its service area covering parts of three Dallas suburbs. The search returns 900 businesses; 140 fall outside the shape and are labeled as out of area.

## In Leadraft

You can draw a polygon, set a radius, upload a KML file, or name a city, county or postcode. Scope is chosen before you search (inside, inside plus nearby, or everything), and out-of-area results are never charged.

## Sources

1.  1.[Leadraft, Coverage methodology](https://leadraft.co/methodology/coverage)

## Related terms

-   [KML fileA KML file is an XML file that stores map shapes, points and lines, used by Google Earth and GIS tools to share areas like sales territories.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/kml-file)
-   [Grid searchGrid search (tiling) splits an area into small tiles and searches each one, to get past the result limits of a single Google Maps search.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/grid-search)
-   [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)
-   [Local lead generationLocal lead generation is finding and contacting businesses in a specific place, such as every dentist in a county, usually starting from Google Maps.](https://leadraft.co/glossary/local-lead-generation)

## Further reading

-   [How to get every business past the 120-result limit](https://leadraft.co/blog/google-maps-120-results-limit)
-   [Coverage methodology](https://leadraft.co/methodology/coverage)
-   [Discovery in Leadraft](https://leadraft.co/product/discovery)

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Last built: 2026-11-09