The Competitive Intelligence Stack: What Every Growth Team Should Be Scraping

In the fast-moving world of digital business, information isn’t just power-it’s strategy. Growth teams that win aren’t just creative or relentless; they’re data-savvy. They know how to collect, interpret, and act on signals from across the web to guide campaigns, prioritize outreach, and uncover new markets.

One of the most underused tools in the modern marketer’s arsenal is web scraping. And no, we’re not talking about shady data grabs or black-hat tactics. We mean targeted, ethical scraping of public information to answer critical questions: Who’s bidding on the same keywords as us? Which local businesses are popping up in our category? Where should we double down, and where are we already saturated?

That’s the role of a competitive intelligence stack. And at the heart of it are two rich data sources: Google Search and Google Maps.

Why Google SERPs Still Matter More Than You Think

It’s easy to assume that Google’s search results are static or predictable, but SERPs are anything but. They change based on location, device, time, and a host of algorithmic tweaks that roll out constantly. For growth teams, keeping an eye on these shifts offers valuable insights:

• Who’s ranking organically for key terms?
• What kinds of content (videos, featured snippets, People Also Ask) are showing up?
• Which competitors are spending on ads, and for what keywords?

Scraping the SERPs at scale lets you build a real-time view of your search landscape-not once a month, but hourly if needed. That means you can:

• Track competitor ad activity across time
• Detect new entrants to your niche
• Measure share of voice across locations or categories
• Identify keyword cannibalization and missed ranking opportunities

HasData’s SERP API makes this kind of monitoring accessible without spinning up your own infrastructure. This API allows growth and SEO teams to automate search result extraction for any query, location, and device type. With structured access to Google SERPs, your team can move from guessing to knowing-and build faster, more confident strategies around it.

For a more technical deep dive into how Google ranks search results, Moz’s Beginner's Guide to SEO offers a great primer.

What Google Maps Tells You That Search Can't

While SERPs give you insight into the digital playing field, Google Maps adds the physical layer. For any growth team working with location-based businesses-whether you're a franchise, B2B provider, agency, or SaaS company targeting SMBs-Maps is a goldmine.

It reveals:

• Local competitors by category
• Business hours, reviews, and photos
• Website and phone number data
• Ratings and total review counts
• Categories and attributes (e.g., "women-owned," "outdoor seating")

Unlike the classic business directory, Maps data is dynamic. Reviews change, hours update, and listings rise and fall based on user activity. If you're building a local lead list, expanding into new metro areas, or auditing client visibility, this dataset is critical.

That’s where HasData’s Google Maps scraper comes in. This tool lets you extract data from Google Maps for any business category, in any location, at scale. Whether you’re pulling the top 200 yoga studios in Austin or every HVAC service in upstate New York, this scraper delivers structured data you can immediately plug into your CRM or BI tool.

If you're unsure how Google Maps impacts local SEO, Search Engine Journal breaks down its influence in a recent guide.

Used together, Google Maps and SERP data offer a full-spectrum view of your competitive landscape: who's winning attention online and who's capturing foot traffic offline.

Real Use Cases from Growth Teams

Let’s look at a few practical scenarios where this kind of scraping stack gives teams a measurable edge:

1. Lead Scoring for Sales Outreach

Instead of buying cold lead lists, a SaaS company targeting local businesses scrapes Google Maps to build a live database of potential customers. Then they layer in SERP data to see which of these businesses are running ads or ranking organically-prioritizing those already investing in digital visibility.

2. Market Saturation Analysis

A fast-casual restaurant brand is eyeing expansion in the Southeast. Their team scrapes Google Maps to map competitor density in top target cities. Meanwhile, they use the SERP API to analyze how many of those competitors dominate search in each area. The result? A city-level scoring model for launch prioritization.

3. Local SEO Reporting for Agencies

Agencies managing multiple small business clients use HasData to pull side-by-side SERP rankings and Maps listings. This data lets them track progress over time, compare visibility against local competitors, and automate reporting without relying solely on tools like BrightLocal or Whitespark.

4. Competitive Intelligence for Product Teams

A B2B software company wants to understand how service providers talk about themselves across markets. They scrape Maps listings for reviews and categories, then scrape SERPs to analyze meta descriptions and title tags. This helps their product marketing team tailor messaging to each region.

Build Your Competitive Intelligence Stack

If you're only relying on keyword trackers or ad platforms to see what's happening in your market, you're flying blind. Modern growth teams need visibility not just into what they're doing, but into the full digital and local footprint of their competitors.

Combining HasData’s tools into a lightweight, powerful scraping stack gives you:

• SERP visibility across devices, languages, and geographies
• Local business intelligence through Maps scraping
• Structured data you can query, visualize, or enrich internally

And perhaps most importantly: the ability to make decisions based on real-time competitive data, not assumptions or third-party estimates.

In a landscape where speed, relevance, and targeting are everything, building your own scraping-powered intelligence stack isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a growth multiplier.

For teams interested in ethical data collection practices, Harvard's Berkman Klein Center provides helpful insights into the legal frameworks of web scraping.