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Sometimes you’re not after every business in an area — you want one specific brand or chain. Exact Name Match is an optional filter in the Google Maps Leads Scraper that keeps only the results whose business name matches what you searched for, and drops everything else. It’s built for one job: chasing a specific brand (like Peugeot, McDonald’s, or Starbucks) without pulling in every unrelated business that happens to appear in the search area.
Exact Name Match is off by default. Turn it on only when you’re targeting a single brand — it’s the wrong tool for broad categories like “all coffee shops.”

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Where to find it

Exact Name Match is a simple on/off toggle (a checkbox) in your Squid’s settings, under the advanced / detail options.
Toggling Exact Name Match on in the Google Maps Leads Scraper settings
There is no separate box to type names into. The filter automatically compares each business name against the text you already entered in the Category / Search Query field. Whatever you typed to run the search is also what the names are matched against.
Adding a search query in the Category / Search Query field
Example: If your Category / Search Query is Peugeot, turning on Exact Name Match keeps only results whose name contains “Peugeot” and removes everything else.
If your tasks are Google Maps search URLs instead of plain keywords, the keyword inside the URL is used as the query. When you’re using this filter, stick to keyword tasks or search URLs so there’s always a query to match against.

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How the matching works

This is the most important part to understand, because the name is a little misleading. Exact Name Match keeps a result when your search query appears anywhere inside the business name. It does not require the name to be exactly equal, and the query does not have to be at the beginning of the name. Before comparing, both your search query and the business name are cleaned up so small differences don’t get in the way. Matching is:
  • Not case-sensitive — peugeot, Peugeot, and PEUGEOT are all treated the same.
  • Accent-insensitive — cafe matches Café, and citroen matches Citroën (and the other way around).
  • Punctuation- and spacing-insensitive — dots, hyphens, apostrophes, &, and extra spaces are ignored. So St-Denis, St Denis, and StDenis are all treated as the same thing, and McDonald's is treated as McDonalds.
Because spacing is ignored, there are no word boundaries — the comparison runs over one continuous string. A query can match the middle of a single word, not just the middle of a name. What it does not do:
  • It does not expand abbreviations. Saint Denis will not match St-Denis, and Company will not match Co.
  • It does not understand related terms, categories, or translations — that’s Category Match.

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Contains, not starts with: worked examples

These examples assume the toggle is on. Search query: peugeot Search query: geot (partial word) Search query: citroen (accents and casing) Search query: mcdonalds (apostrophes and spacing) Abbreviations work one way only
Short queries match more than you expect. Because the query only has to appear somewhere in the name, a two- or three-letter query will pull in unrelated businesses. Use the full brand name.
Names written in non-Latin scripts are dropped. Japanese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic and similar business names can’t be compared, so they’re removed while the toggle is on. Letters that have no plain-Latin equivalent are also affected — Straße is read as Strae, so a query of strasse won’t match it. If you’re scraping a market where names aren’t written in Latin characters, leave this filter off.

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Using a single search term

Exact Name Match works with one search query at a time. It does not support:
  • Multiple names — you can’t enter a list like peugeot, citroen and match either one. Your whole query is treated as a single phrase, so only a name that literally contains “Peugeot Citroen” together would match. Neither “Peugeot Lyon” nor “Citroen Lyon” is kept.
  • Excluding names — there’s no way to say “remove any result whose name contains X.” The filter can only keep matches, not block them. A minus sign doesn’t help either: -peugeot is read as peugeot, so it keeps Peugeot results instead of removing them.
If you need several brands, run a separate crawl for each one.

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What happens when it’s off

When the toggle is off (the default), names are not filtered at all — you get every result the search returned, subject to any other filters you’ve set.

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How it works with the Category Match filter

Exact Name Match and the Category Match filter are separate settings that work together — both must pass. Category Match is flexible and understands related terms, translations and categories, while Exact Name Match only looks at the business name. Category Match runs first, and it’s on by default. That matters when you’re chasing a brand: a query like peugeot is a brand name, not a business category, so Google’s category for those listings (“Car dealer”) often doesn’t match it — and Category Match drops the result before Exact Name Match ever sees the name.
Hunting a specific brand? Turn Category Match off and Exact Name Match on. Leaving both on is the most common reason a brand crawl comes back empty.

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When the filter runs

Exact Name Match is applied after results are collected, and it’s the last filter checked. It trims down the results you get, rather than changing how the search itself is performed. Results dropped by the filter are removed before email and phone enrichment and before any credits are charged — so filtered-out businesses cost you nothing. You’ll see a line in your run log for each one:

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Tips and common mistakes

Use it for brands and chains, not generic categories. It shines for “only Starbucks” but is the wrong tool for “all coffee shops.”
  • Use the full brand name. Partial queries match inside other words and let unrelated businesses through.
  • Turn Category Match off for brand hunts. It runs first and will drop brand queries that don’t look like a business category.
  • Don’t expect abbreviations to be understood. “Saint” vs “St”, “and” vs ”&”, and “Company” vs “Co” are all treated as different.
  • One brand per run. Comma-separated lists won’t work — split them into separate crawls.
  • It matches your search query, not a custom list. You can’t match a name that’s different from what you searched for.

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A note on the name

Although it’s called Exact Name Match, it isn’t a strict, character-for-character match: it ignores case, accents, and punctuation, and it accepts any name that contains your query anywhere. Think of it as “name contains my search term” rather than “name is identical to my search term.”