I am working on a Firms study in South Africa, and I am interested in using Google Maps (specifically: Google Places) to pull a list of all establishments (in this case: certain franchises/stores/chains) in a given area. I want to pull coordinates (and possibly other details), based on a search term, i.e. the franchise/store/chain name, into a neat dataframe. I want this to be a general solution, so I can vary the search term.
I have a crude system using R and a library called "googleway", however, the Google Places API is extremely limiting, and I'm struggling to get past the first few pages of search results. (I run into trouble with the next-page tokens).
Is there a better way of doing this?
Best!