How to Find Distributors and Buyers Abroad with Google Maps
There are six common ways to find buyers in another country, and each one finds a different link in the buyer chain. Google Maps is the cheapest and fastest of them, but it only finds wholesalers, dealers, retailers and installers that have a physical location.
This guide shows how to list that link. It also covers the part most export guides skip: which contact channel works in which target country, based on 3,147 Google Maps listings from 20 countries.
What each way of finding buyers abroad actually finds
Every method gets described as "finding customers", but each one finds a different person. That is what should drive the choice.
| Method | What it finds | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|
| International trade fairs | Active buyers, face to face | Expensive, a few times a year |
| B2B marketplaces (Alibaba, Europages, Kompass and similar) | Firms that registered on the platform | Limited to whoever signed up; you mostly wait to be found |
| Customs and bill of lading data | Who really imports, and how much | Costly subscription, blind to the retail layer |
| Trade offices and export associations | Market knowledge, a handful of names | Does not produce lists at speed |
| The decision maker's name and title | Weak for small businesses, slow | |
| Google Maps | Wholesalers, dealers, shops and installers with a location; phone, website, email | No import volume or revenue, misses office-only intermediaries |
The practical reading: customs data answers "who imports", Google Maps answers "who sells and who uses". For a furniture manufacturer, the first shows the big importer and the second shows the hundreds of stores that importer sells to. They are not competing options. They are consecutive steps.
Which buyers to search for on Google Maps
Think less about who pays you and more about whose shelf, warehouse or job site your product ends up on. Google Maps lists that physical point.
- Furniture and homeware: furniture store, furniture wholesaler, interior designer, home goods store.
- Tiles, building materials, sanitaryware: building materials supplier, tile store, bathroom supply store.
- Food: grocery store, food products supplier, wholesaler. Diaspora shops are often the fastest first order: a search such as "Turkish grocery" in Germany or "Polish deli" in the UK lists buyers who already know the product.
- Parts and machinery: auto parts store, industrial equipment supplier.
- If you want intermediaries directly: Google's business categories include Importer, Exporter, Import export company and Wholesaler. Intermediaries with a warehouse or showroom appear under them.
One warning: the word you search is not a marketing class, it is the category the business chose for itself. The firm you think of as a "distributor" may be listed as "Wholesaler" or "Building materials supplier". That is why one query is never enough.
A buyer list abroad, step by step
- Pick the country and the area. Target two or three cities, not the whole country. You can choose country, state and city, or draw your own area on the map. There is no postcode or radius-around-an-address search; if you need a tight area, drawing it is the way.
- Write the queries. One job takes up to ten queries. Enter the English category and the local-language word as separate queries: furniture store and Möbelhaus, wholesaler and mayorista or grossiste. The local word also catches businesses that carry it in their name.
- Extract and export. The CSV or Excel file has 22 columns: phone, website, email, social links, rating, review count, coordinates and business status among them.
- Clean. Drop rows whose category does not fit. Remove anything the
business_statuscolumn marks as closed. - Prioritise. There is no revenue or headcount, only rough signals: review count, the same name in several cities, a website on its own domain.
- Choose the channel by country. The next section exists for exactly this.
The mechanics of pulling a list for an area are in how to get a list of businesses in any area. To decide which city to try first, see local market research with Google Maps.
Where email works and where the phone wins
A Google Maps listing has no email field. If a tool hands you an email, it read it from the website linked to the listing. So the ceiling for email in a market is the share of businesses in that market that have a website.
That share varies a lot. The table below comes from a sample of 3,147 listings in 20 countries and shows the markets exporters target most often:
| Country | Sample | Has a website | Phone only | No contact data at all |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 150 | 94.0% | 4.7% | 1.3% |
| Netherlands | 110 | 90.9% | 5.5% | 3.6% |
| Germany | 150 | 90.0% | 10.0% | 0.0% |
| United States | 175 | 87.4% | 10.3% | 2.3% |
| Poland | 159 | 84.9% | 13.8% | 1.3% |
| United Arab Emirates | 198 | 83.3% | 14.6% | 2.0% |
| France | 158 | 74.7% | 22.8% | 2.5% |
| Spain | 111 | 71.2% | 24.3% | 4.5% |
| Italy | 138 | 67.4% | 27.5% | 5.1% |
| South Africa | 300 | 42.0% | 51.7% | 6.3% |
| Mexico | 143 | 31.5% | 46.9% | 21.7% |
There are two different worlds here. In the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, nine businesses in ten have a site, so a well built email list reaches almost all of them. In South Africa and Mexico, roughly half the market is reachable by phone only, and an email tool cannot see most of the list. Italy and Spain sit in between, with one listing in four being phone only.
One limit: the sample leans towards restaurants and dental clinics, it was collected in April and May 2026, and it is not population weighted. Wholesalers probably have websites more often. The order between countries holds, and the order is what makes the channel decision. The full data is in the contactability by country CSV, with the method in the local business contactability benchmark.
Where emails really come from is explained in how to get emails from Google Maps, and the messaging channel for phone-heavy markets in WhatsApp outreach to local businesses.
Cold email abroad: whose rules apply
The rules that matter are those of the country where the recipient is, not yours. Five common target markets:
- Germany: UWG section 7 requires the recipient's prior express consent for advertising email and makes no distinction between businesses and consumers. Phoning a business needs at least presumed consent. That is why first contact in Germany is usually a call or a trade fair.
- United Kingdom: under the ICO's PECR guidance, you can send B2B email to corporate subscribers without consent. Sole traders and some partnerships are excluded. You cannot hide your identity and must give a valid opt-out address.
- United States: CAN-SPAM covers B2B email but does not require prior consent. Accurate sender information, an honest subject line, a physical postal address and honouring opt-outs within 10 business days are mandatory.
- France: the CNIL allows email to professionals without prior consent, provided the subject relates to the recipient's profession and they can object.
- Spain: LSSI article 21 bans commercial email that was not requested or expressly authorised, and does not distinguish between types of recipient.
This is not legal advice. Have a specialist confirm the target country before a campaign starts. The broader framework for collecting the data itself is in finding business contacts: legal and privacy guide.
What Google Maps cannot find
To be straight about it, the method has three blind spots:
- Import volume. Google Maps does not know how many tiles a store buys each year. Volume is a job for customs data.
- Office-only intermediaries. Trading companies without a warehouse or showroom are often missing from the map or listed without a useful category.
- The decision maker's name. A listing gives you the business, not the purchasing manager. The name comes from LinkedIn or the team page of the company's site.
So the most productive order is this: use Google Maps to list the layer that sells in your target city, learn from the first calls which importer they buy from, then go to that importer. A supplier name heard from a retailer is information no database holds.
FAQ
What is the cheapest way to find buyers abroad?
Listing the wholesalers, dealers and retailers in your target city from Google Maps. It costs a fraction of a trade fair or a customs data subscription and returns results the same day. The limit is just as clear: Google Maps shows businesses with a physical location, not import volumes or revenue.
Do importers show up on Google Maps?
Some do. Google's business categories include Importer, Exporter and Wholesaler, and firms with a warehouse or showroom list themselves under them. But the only source that shows who actually imports a product, and how much, is customs and bill of lading data. Google Maps does not answer that question.
Is it legal to cold email businesses in another country?
It depends on the rules of the recipient's country. In Germany, UWG section 7 requires prior express consent for advertising email even between businesses, and Spain's LSSI article 21 requires authorisation without distinguishing recipient types. In the UK you can email corporate subscribers without consent, and in the US CAN-SPAM requires a working opt-out. This is not legal advice; check the target country before a campaign.
Which countries suit email and which suit the phone?
Look at the website rate, because email addresses only come from a business's own site. In our sample, 94.0% of UK listings and 90.0% of German listings had a website, against 31.5% in Mexico and 42.0% in South Africa. Email reaches the first group; phone and WhatsApp reach more of the second.
How can I tell how big a foreign business is?
Google Maps gives no headcount or revenue. You work from rough signals: review count, the same name listed in several cities, a website on its own domain. For firm numbers, check the company's site, the country's business register or customs data.
Getting started
Start with one country, two cities and the three categories your product goes into. The first list will also tell you which market opens by email and which by phone. To turn it into a campaign, continue with turning Google Maps leads into a cold email campaign.
Create an account and build your first list with 30 free credits every month, no card required.