How to Find Business Leads with Gemini AI (Without Fake Results)

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Building a list of leads usually means hours of searching, copying, and pasting. AI can speed that up a lot, but there’s a catch: AI can invent businesses that don’t exist.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to choose a niche and a location, use Gemini to build your first lead list with a prompt that prevents made-up results, move the data into Google Sheets, and verify every lead before you contact anyone.

Prefer watching? Here’s the full video walkthrough:

What You’ll Need

• Gemini to build the lead list
• IBISWorld to browse business categories and models (optional)
• CafaAI: An AI chat assistant to help you choose a niche and location (optional)
• Google Sheets to store and organize your leads

The Big Risk: AI Can Invent Leads

AI chat assistants are good at producing text that looks right. If you simply ask for “a list of businesses and their emails,” you may get brands that don’t exist, websites that are wrong, and email addresses that were guessed.

Two habits prevent most of this:

1. Give the AI strict rules in your prompt, including “write unknown if you aren’t sure.”
2. Verify every lead yourself before you use it.

We’ll do both in this tutorial.

Step 1: Pick Your Niche

Before you ask AI for leads, decide what kind of business you want to reach. The best niche is one that already feels the pain your service solves.

Option A: Browse IBISWorld

IBISWorld organizes businesses into industries, and each industry lists specific business models inside it. For example, a food and accommodation category includes bars, hotels, campgrounds, and catering services.

Open the category that matches your interests, then note the specific business model you’ll target.

Option B: Ask Cafa AI, an AI assistant to suggest niches

If you’re unsure which business model to choose, describe what you offer and ask for suggestions. Here’s the prompt used in the video:

I offer website development services in Ghana. What business models should I target for my cold emails?

Change the service and the country to match yours. In the video, the AI recommended groups such as:

• E-commerce brands: fashion, beauty, electronics, and grocery delivery
• Hospitality and tourism: boutiques, hotels, lodges, tour operators, and restaurants
• Professional services

Pro Tip: Treat AI suggestions as a starting point, not a verdict. Ask yourself: do these businesses actually need what I offer, and can they afford it?

Step 2: Pick Your Location

Next, choose where to look. You can ask the same AI assistant:

What is the best location to target for my cold email outreach in [your country]? I offer [your service].

In the video’s example for Ghana, the AI suggested starting with Accra, then Kumasi, then Takoradi and the coastal zones. You can run the same prompt for any country.

For your first campaign, pick one business model and one city. A small, focused list is easier to verify and gives you cleaner results to learn from.

Step 3: Build Your Lead List with Gemini

Open Gemini and use a prompt with clear rules. Copy this and replace the brackets:

Act as a careful research assistant. Find up to 15 [business type] in [city].

Return a table with these columns: business name, website, email, phone number, address, source URL.

Rules:
- Only include businesses you can point to a source for.
- If you are not sure about any detail, write "unknown". Do not guess or invent.
- Do not include personal email addresses. Only include business email addresses.

After the table, list any details you are less than confident about.

Here’s why each part matters:

Prompt part	Why it matters
”Careful research assistant”	Sets a more cautious tone
”Up to 15”	Keeps the list small enough to verify by hand
Source URL column	Gives you a link to check every lead
”Write unknown, do not guess”	Reduces invented details
”No personal emails”	Keeps you on the safer side of anti-spam and data protection rules
”List what you’re less confident about”	Shows you where to double-check first

Pro Tip: If you want to target a different niche, only change the [business type] and [city]. The rules stay the same.

Step 4: Move the Leads into Google Sheets

1. Copy the table from Gemini.
2. Open a new Google Sheet and rename a tab, for example First list.
3. Click cell A1 and paste with Ctrl + V.
4. Drag the columns wider so you can read everything.

Fix the phone number errors

Phone numbers may show an error in Google Sheets because the sheet tries to treat them as formulas or numbers. To fix this:

1. Select the phone number column.
2. Click Format, then Number, then Plain text.
3. Delete the broken values in that column.
4. Go back to Gemini, copy the phone numbers again, and paste them into the column.

The numbers now display correctly. You may also need to delete any extra characters, such as stray equals signs, left in the cells.

Pro Tip: Set the phone column to Plain text before you paste. It saves you from fixing the errors afterward.

Step 5: Verify Every Lead

This is the most important step. Don’t contact anyone until you’ve confirmed the business is real.

For each lead:

1. Click the source URL. Does the page exist, and does it show the same business?
2. Search the business name on Google to confirm it appears elsewhere.
3. Open the website. Does it load and look like a real business site?
4. Check the details (email, phone, address) against what the website shows.

In the video, five businesses were checked this way and all five were real. Gemini had given a genuine list.

Spot opportunities while you check

If you sell digital services, verification also shows you who needs help:

• No working website: In the example, one brand had a domain, but the website wasn’t loading. That’s a possible client for a web developer.
• Slow website: Run a quick page speed test. Slow sites are good prospects for performance work.
• Poor search visibility: If a business doesn’t rank, it may need SEO.
• Missing details: If the AI wrote “unknown” for the website, search the business name to see whether it exists at all.

Pro Tip: Add a “Notes” column in your Google Sheet and record what you find, such as “site down,” “slow,” or “no email.” These notes make your outreach messages specific and personal.

Your Lead Verification Checklist

• The business appears in the source URL I was given.
• The business exists on Google or Google Maps.
• The website loads and matches the business.
• The email is a business address, not a personal one.
• I noted what problem I can solve for them.
• I removed any lead I couldn’t confirm.

Verify the Email Addresses Too

A real business can still have a wrong email address on your list. Before sending, run your emails through a verifier so you avoid bounces that hurt your sending reputation. MailVerix does bulk email verification and list cleaning for Windows, using MX and DNS record validation.

Use Leads Responsibly

Finding a business’s public email doesn’t mean you can message it however you like. Keep these rules in mind:

• Stick to business emails and avoid personal addresses.
• Be honest and relevant. Explain who you are and why you’re writing.
• Include a simple way to opt out, and respect it.
• Know your local laws. Anti-spam and data protection rules differ by country (for example, CAN-SPAM in the US and GDPR in Europe).

Important: We are not legal advisors. Check the rules that apply to you and the people you contact.

The Downsides of This Manual Workflow

This method works, but it has several manual steps: using one AI to choose a niche, using Gemini to build the list, copying everything into Google Sheets, fixing format problems, and verifying each lead by hand.

If you want to speed up the finding and extracting stages, these tools are built for it:

• LeadHarvester Pro is built for hyper-local B2B lead harvesting.
• BulkGrab is a lead harvester and search pattern engine with smart query expansion.

What’s Next

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at automating this process so that entering a keyword, an audience, and a location builds, checks, and saves your leads for you. When your list is ready, the next step is sending from a properly configured server. See the Create Your Own SMTP Server course to learn how.

Conclusion

You can build a first lead list with AI in minutes, as long as you use clear rules and don’t trust it blindly. Choose a niche and a location, use a prompt that forbids guessing, paste the results into Google Sheets, and verify every lead before you reach out. The verification step is what turns an AI-generated list into a list you can actually use.

Stop just watching and start building. If you want to speed up this process and automate your workflows, check out the premium tools at Smartivate Tech.