Places Importer for ListingPro

Places Importer for ListingPro is a tool designed to automate the import of Google-rated business listings into directories built with ListingPro. It addresses the challenge of manual data entry by allowing users to quickly populate their directories with businesses from Google Maps, including details such as hours, reviews, photos, contact information, and social media links. Users can specify a location and business category, set filters like minimum star rating (defaulting to 3 stars and above), and choose which fields to import. With a single click, all matching businesses are created as complete ListingPro listings, with every field automatically populated and ready for publication.

The product leverages Google Gemini AI to translate and summarize customer reviews into the local language and to auto-generate tags and categories for imported listings. It uses SerpApi to fetch live data from Google Maps, including high-resolution photos and paginated results, without requiring direct use of the Google Places API. To prevent duplicate entries, Places Importer checks Google Place IDs before importing and updates existing listings as needed. Google cover photos are downloaded directly into the WordPress media library with security measures such as SSRF protection and MIME-type checks. A responsive AJAX dashboard helps users manage imports efficiently, pre-filtering already-imported businesses and enabling batch imports with a single action.

All key business information is imported automatically, including name, address, phone number, website, opening hours, Google rating, review count, business category, cover photo, GPS coordinates, and social media links. The tool also features background auto-sync using WP-Cron, which keeps imported listings up to date by refreshing star ratings and review counts automatically.

Places Importer is available as a free version on WordPress.org, which supports core importing features and duplicate checking. A Pro version, offered for an annual fee, adds Gemini AI-powered translation and summaries, full gallery sync (up to 12 photos), AI-curated review import, auto-tagging and categorization, social and website links import, and daily background auto-sync. The tool relies on SerpApi and Google AI Studio keys, both of which provide free usage tiers suitable for small to medium directories, and does not charge per-import extraction fees. It is compatible with all current versions of ListingPro from v2.6 onwards and supports all standard and custom listing fields.