Use Google Places to automatically find local businesses in any niche and location.
Lead Discovery is the first step in the Hippopotamoose workflow. It queries the Google Places API to find local businesses in a geographic area, filters out franchises, and adds every business that has a website to your evaluation queue.
You never need to manually search or copy URLs. The app finds the businesses and loads their sites in the Lead Evaluation panel automatically.
The Discovery Panel sits in the top-left of the main window. It contains the following fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Niche | What type of business to search for. Can be plain English (plumber) or a Google Places type code (plumbing_contractor). |
| Latitude | The latitude of the center point for your search. Get this from Google Maps (right-click → copy coordinates). |
| Longitude | The longitude of the center point. |
| Radius (km) | How far from the center point to search, in kilometres. |
| Chunks | Number of spiral tiles to search (see Chunked Searches below). Set to 1 for a single search. |
| Preset | Save and reload search configurations. |
The niche field controls which Google Places API endpoint is used:
| Input Style | Example | API Used | When to Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain English | roofing contractor | Places Text Search | Good for most searches. More flexible matching. |
| Underscore type code | roofing_contractor | Places Nearby Search | Precise — only returns businesses Google has classified under that exact type. Radius capped at 50 km. |
Use type codes when you want strict results (e.g., only actual plumbers, not businesses that mention "plumbing"). Use plain English when results are too sparse with a type code.
Hippopotamoose automatically skips franchise businesses. A built-in blocklist of ~150 keyword fragments (McDonald's, Subway, Jiffy Lube, etc.) is checked against every business name before it is added to the queue. If the name contains any franchise keyword, it is silently discarded.
This means your queue will only contain independent, locally-owned businesses — the exact target for a website recreation offer.
When a discovery run completes, every found business is added to the Queue tab in the Discovery Panel list. Only businesses with a public website URL are added — businesses without websites are skipped automatically.
Businesses you previously rejected are remembered permanently. They will never appear in the queue again, even if you run the same search in the future.
Google Places returns a maximum of 20 results per API call. For dense urban areas, this means a single call will miss many businesses. Chunked search solves this by dividing the area into a grid of overlapping tiles searched in a spiral pattern.
Setting Chunks to a value greater than 1 generates that many search tiles arranged in a square spiral around the center point:
| Chunks | Tiles | Area Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 tile | Single circle centered on your coordinates |
| 4 | 4 tiles | 2×2 spiral — good for medium cities |
| 9 | 9 tiles | 3×3 spiral — good for large cities |
| 16 | 16 tiles | 4×4 spiral — metro areas with high business density |
Each tile is one Google Places API call. With 16 chunks you are making 16 API requests per run. Monitor your Google Cloud billing if running large searches frequently.
A preset saves your Niche, Latitude, Longitude, Radius, and Chunks settings so you can re-run the same search with one click.
Fill in your search fields, then click Save next to the Preset dropdown. Enter a name (e.g. "Vancouver Plumbers") and click OK.
Click the Preset dropdown and select a saved preset. All fields will be populated automatically.
Select it from the dropdown and click the Delete button next to it.
The list below the search form has two tabs:
| Tab | Contents |
|---|---|
| Queue | Businesses waiting to be evaluated. Click any entry to open its site in the Lead Evaluation panel. |
| Rejected | Businesses you pressed "Pass" on. Stored permanently so they never appear again. |