Search

What a search does

A search asks Google Places for businesses in the territory you drew, drops the ones already in your workspace and the ones on your suppression list, imports the rest, and queues an audit for each. It runs in the background: closing the tab does not stop it, and the results are in your workspace whether or not you watched.

The four steps

Location and radius

The territory is a centre and a radius, drawn on the map as you set it. Places returns at most sixty businesses for any one query, so a very large radius does not return more — it returns the same count spread thinner.

Categories

Up to 5 at a time. Each category is swept separately, so three categories is three passes over the same territory and finds more than one pass looking for all three. Leaving it empty sweeps every local business, which is the right choice when you are looking at a suburb rather than a trade.

Filters

Two, and both are applied to what comes back rather than to the query: website status (any, or businesses with no website at all) and a minimum star rating. Because they filter after the fetch, a filtered search is capped lower — 10 leads per category sweep, up to the same 50 ceiling. The form says the number before you commit to it.

Amount

How many businesses this search may return, up to 50. It is not a bill: a search does not spend credits, and asking for more only means a longer list to choose from.

What it costs

Nothing to search. A credit is spent when you open one of the businesses a search found, and never before.

• A search returns previews.Each one names the business and shows what it is, where it is, how it is rated, and whether it has a website at all — enough to judge whether it is worth opening. Its phone number is shown with most of the digits hidden.
• One lead credit opens one business.That runs the website audit — measured performance, a screenshot, a scored opportunity and a written draft — and reveals the full phone number and website to act on it.
• Audits are included. The website check, the screenshot and the score are part of opening a lead, not a second charge, and a failed audit can be retried without another credit.
• Opening the same business twice costs once. Once it is open it stays open, and nothing takes it back.

Businesses you never open are cleared thirty days after the search that found them. They are Google Places records we are holding on the chance you want them, not a list we may keep indefinitely.

How many businesses you can find

A ticket is one business found, not one search run. A plan grants a number of them each week alongside its credits: 15 on Starter, 100 on Pro and 400 on Agency. They refill every Monday at 00:00 UTC, on the same clock as the credits, and both figures sit at the top of the search page.

A search holds a ticket for every business it asks for and gives back what it does not find. Ask for twenty five and find nine, and it costs nine — and businesses already in your workspace, or matching a suppression rule, cost nothing at all, because they were never imported.

The two meters answer different questions. Tickets are how many businesses you may find; credits are how many of those you may open. They are sized so the credits run out first — you should be choosing what to open, not rationing where to look.

On Starter, the last search of the week asks you to complete a bot check first. It is one click and it costs nothing.

What the audit measures

• Measured performance.Google PageSpeed Insights against the business’s live site, cached for fourteen days so repeat looks at the same site do not re-measure it.
• A screenshot, captured in a controlled browser, where the site allows one.
• Public business signals — rating, review count, category, whether a website exists at all.

The score is deterministic: a fixed set of rules, each with points and the evidence that triggered it, stored with the audit. The same lead audited twice with the same evidence scores the same both times. It ranks what to look at first; it does not predict a sale.

While it runs

The progress panel names the stage — finding, filtering, auditing, preparing — and drops a pin on the globe as each business is saved. The estimate under the bar is measured from the leads that have already settled, so it appears once there is something to measure rather than guessing from the start.

Recent searches keep their results. Reopen one from the rail to see what it found, what it cost and how the scores fell. Something wrong? See Troubleshooting.