Free Marketing Research Tools
Two research tools built on live search results. One finds the questions people asked on Reddit about your topic in the last two months; the other turns a local search like "dentists in Leeds" into a CSV of businesses.
Showing 2 tools
Ask Questions
Find the questions people are actually asking about a topic on Reddit in the last two months, cleaned into headings you can build an article around.
Maps Scraper
Pull business listings for any search and place: name, address, category, rating, review count, phone and website, deduplicated and exportable as CSV.
Marketing research tools answer two questions that come before any campaign: what does my audience want to know, and who could I sell to. The two tools here each take one of those questions and return something you can work from. Ask Questions finds the questions people asked on Reddit about a topic in the last two months, cleaned into lines you could use as headings. The Maps Scraper turns a local search such as "plumbers Manchester" into a table of businesses with their address, rating, phone and website.
Both are free marketing tools, no signup, and both differ from almost everything else on this site in one way worth knowing first. They cannot run client-side, because the data lives in a search index rather than in anything you paste. Your topic or local search is sent to the Toolz.dev server, which queries a paid search API and returns the cleaned results. That cost is also why each tool allows three searches per visitor per day, resetting at midnight UTC. What you do with the research is on-page work: the measurement tools are in SEO, and the drafting ones in AI text tools.
Which marketing research tool answers which question
| Question | Tool | What you get back | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is my audience asking right now? | Ask Questions | Reddit thread titles from the last two months, questions ranked first, copyable as a Markdown list | Only what Google has indexed from Reddit; fixed two-month window |
| Which local businesses could I contact? | Maps Scraper | Up to 50 listings with name, address, category, rating, review count, phone and website | No emails, opening hours or review text; 50 listings per search |
| How many businesses in a niche have no website? | Maps Scraper | A summary of website and phone coverage and the average rating, before the table | A sample of the densest categories, not a census |
| What angle should my next article take? | Ask Questions | The subreddit and a link to each thread, so you can read the replies | A question being asked is not proof of search volume |
How does Ask Questions find what people ask?
It runs five Google searches restricted to reddit.com: the quoted topic on its own, and four phrasings that pull threads written as questions, built around "how do I", "should I", "is it worth" and "question". Each one fetches two pages of results, and the freshness filter limits them to the last two months, so ten result pages feed every search. The same thread often appears under several phrasings, so titles are de-duplicated after cleaning.
Cleaning matters more than it sounds. Google appends the subreddit and the site name to a Reddit result, so a title arrives as "Is a grinder worth it? - r/espresso - Reddit", and neither suffix belongs in an outline. Fragments under fifteen characters are dropped because they are almost always truncated titles. Anything that ends in a question mark or opens with how, what, why, should, can or a similar word sorts to the top. For content research this works as a free answer the public alternative built on real threads rather than autocomplete, with the caveat the tool itself states: a question someone asked is an angle, and demand still needs checking in a keyword tool.
What does the Google Maps scraper return?
The Google Maps scraper reads a places search index through its API rather than driving a browser through the maps site, which keeps it stable when a page layout changes. It fetches five pages of ten, merges them and removes duplicates on name plus address together. Keying on the name alone would collapse every branch of a chain into one row, and branches are usually what a local search is for.
Each listing carries seven fields, and the CSV export quotes every field and doubles internal quotes as RFC 4180 specifies, so a business called Joe's "Best" Coffee, Inc. stays in one cell when a spreadsheet opens it. The export follows the active filter, so narrowing to listings that publish a website or a phone number before downloading gives you a shorter, contactable list. For lead generation, the most useful number is often the share of listings without a website, which the summary shows before you read a row.
Where do these tools stop?
Both tools see an index, not the live source. A Reddit thread posted this morning may not be indexed yet, and a business that closed last month can still be listed with a phone number that no longer answers. Reddit also skews young, English-speaking and technical, which makes Reddit question research strong for software, hobbies and consumer products and weak for topics whose audience talks elsewhere. Fifty listings is a slice of a dense category such as restaurants in London, so search by neighbourhood when you need coverage rather than a sample.
What you do with the results is your responsibility. Contacting businesses from a scraped list falls under the marketing and privacy rules of their country, and quoting a Reddit thread in an article calls for a link to it. Treat both outputs as research that points you somewhere, then verify before you publish or pick up the phone.
Frequently asked questions
Are these marketing research tools free?
Yes, free, no signup. Each search costs Toolz.dev a paid search API call, so each tool allows three searches per visitor per day, resetting at midnight UTC. Downloading the CSV again or with a different filter does not use a search.
Do these tools run client-side like the rest of the site?
No. They need live search results, so the topic or local search you type is sent to the Toolz.dev server, which queries the search API and returns the cleaned results. A per-visitor counter enforces the daily cap, and neither tool works offline.
Does the Maps Scraper include email addresses?
No. The places index it reads does not carry email addresses. Each listing includes the website where one is published, which is usually where a contact address can be found.
How many results does each search return?
The Maps Scraper returns up to 50 distinct listings from five pages of ten. Ask Questions runs five query phrasings across two result pages each and returns every unique thread title of fifteen characters or more, questions first.
Why does Ask Questions only look at the last two months?
Because an older question has usually been answered by the internet already. The window is fixed so the results show gaps that are open now, which suits trending topics and suits evergreen topics less well.
Is scraping Google Maps data allowed?
The tool reads a licensed places search API rather than automating a browser against the maps site. How you use the resulting data, and in particular contacting the businesses in it, is subject to the marketing and privacy laws that apply to you and to them.