How to Find Businesses Within a Radius

You must be aware of your competition if you are a small business owner. If you are looking to expand and grow your business, it is also helpful to know what kinds of companies are near you and might be good partners or clients in the future. 

Fortunately, many tools can help you find nearby businesses and determine their marketing potential by industry and other factors. 

Here are some tips on how to find businesses within a radius, based on your needs and preferences, using three popular location-based search engines: Google My Business, Foursquare and Yelp.

What is a radius tool?

A radius tool allows you to search for businesses within a certain distance. If you are looking for something specific, such as an Italian restaurant or coffee shop, you can type that in the search bar, and it will find the closest one. 

You can also enter your address, and it will find all the businesses in your area. This is helpful if you are still determining what kind of business you want but know what part of town or city you would like to be in.

How do you do a radius search?

To do a radius search, you type in what you are looking for and enter the radius in miles. 

For example, if we are looking for restaurants in Santa Barbara and the nearest city is Ventura, we would put a restaurant and set my search to 10 miles. This will show us only businesses within ten miles of Santa Barbara.

If we wanted more than 10 miles, we could change the number to 20 or 30. If we wanted less than 10 miles, we would make it 5 or 8.

However, remember that this might not be very helpful because all the businesses near Santa Barbara would also be shown. Try typing something like a restaurant and set your search as 15 miles away from Ventura. This way, you can find all the restaurants around Santa Barbara without having them clustered together on one map.

Google Maps

If you are looking for businesses within a radius, the best place to start is Google Maps. 

1. Input your desired location and click the Search nearby button. 
2. Your search will give you the number of businesses within that area and their distance from your searched location. 
3. Clicking on any of these will provide you with more information about each company, including their address and phone number.

 

You can also set up notifications through Google Maps so that it will send you alerts when new businesses are added in the future. 

Yelp

You can use Yelp to find businesses within a certain radius of your location. For example, if you are looking for restaurants near you, you can search restaurants, and the first thing it will ask is where? If you click on the map, it will give you options of what city or neighbourhood or even just put in your address. 

You can also do this for other things, such as hair salons, dentists, etc. It will show you a list of nearby that match your criteria with their address and phone number. 

Foursquare

You can search via the app or in the browser to find business listings on Foursquare. 

● To search on the app, type in keywords related to your search and then sort by distance. 

● When you are done with that, tap on Search Nearby and scroll down until you see Search Nearby – Map View. 

● Click it and then use your phone’s GPS or another mapping system to find nearby businesses. For example, if we type vegan food into the app and zoom out on the map to cover San Francisco, we can pinpoint cafes near us that have vegan options.

Bing 

You can also use Bing’s near me search tool, which allows you to enter an address or GPS coordinates and displays locations near this point on a map. 

It will also provide basic information about these places, such as their name and description, how many people have rated them, and how far they are away from the selected point. 

How do you draw a radius on Google Earth?

Google Earth is easy to find businesses within a radius of where you are looking. You must zoom in on the area, right-click on the map, and then select draw. You can then use your mouse or finger and draw a circle around the area you want to search. Here is how to do it:

1. Open Google Earth and click on the Layers icon in the top right corner. Select Add Layer. 
2. Click Add Custom Image and upload your custom map, which should be in JPG or PNG format. You can also use a map from Google Maps or Bing Maps by clicking on one of those links and then dragging it onto the screen where you want it to go. 
3. Draw a square around the area you would like to see businesses within that radius. 
4. Right-click inside the square, select Properties and enter an exact distance measurement in feet or meters (in this example, we are using 10 miles). 
5. Press Apply > Done > OK when finished drawing your radius shape on Google Earth.

With these steps completed, you will have access to a list of companies near you.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to find businesses within a radius. You can search online or walk around your neighbourhood. If you do an online search, make sure you have the area and radius in mind before typing any keywords into your browser. Once you have found some potential businesses, take the time to call them and see if they are open for business. Make sure that if you are looking for services such as doctors, dentists, or other professionals, they provide those services near the radius of where you live.