The Scenario
A hospitality data analyst left the team three weeks ago. Before leaving, they exported 300 Foursquare FSQ IDs into a Google Sheet as part of a competitor database project. The column is there. The IDs are there. The name, address, category, and rating columns next to them are completely empty.
You inherited the sheet. Leadership wants the competitor database finished by end of month.
The bad version:
- Copy each FSQ ID, paste it into the Foursquare API explorer, read the JSON response, and manually copy the name, address, category, and rating into the corresponding row
- Get through 40 rows the first day, realize the JSON structure isn't consistent across venue types, and spend an hour debugging why some fields are missing
- Calculate that at this rate, finishing 300 rows will take the better part of next week — time you were supposed to spend on the actual analysis
Nobody hired you to be a data entry operator for an API. The analysis is the job.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads your FSQ IDs, talks to Foursquare, and populates the empty columns — no API explorer, no JSON parsing, no row-by-row manual work.
For each Foursquare FSQ ID in column A, fetch the venue details and write name into column B, address into column C, category into column D, and rating into column E
What You Get
- Columns B through E populated for each FSQ ID where Foursquare returns venue data
- Venue names, formatted addresses, Foursquare category labels, and numerical ratings
- Any IDs that return no data or a deprecated record get flagged in column F so you can audit them separately rather than hunting for blank rows
- The full 300-row operation completes in one pass
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Some FSQ IDs in column A are duplicates — deduplicate before fetching
Remove duplicate FSQ IDs from column A, keeping the first occurrence of each, then fetch Foursquare venue details for each unique ID and write name, address, category, and rating into columns B through E
The IDs are mixed with some venue names already partially filled in column B — only fetch where column B is blank
For rows where column B is empty, use the FSQ ID in column A to fetch the Foursquare venue name, address, category, and rating and write them into columns B through E
You need the primary venue category and all sub-categories written separately
For each FSQ ID in column A, fetch the Foursquare venue and write name into column B, primary category into column C, all sub-categories comma-separated into column D, and address into column E
Clean, enrich, and flag low-rated venues for removal from the database in one pass
For each FSQ ID in column A, fetch venue details and write name into column B, address into column C, category into column D, and rating into column E, then flag any row with a rating below 5 or a blank rating in column F with "Review"
Combining the fetch and the flag in a single prompt saves a second pass later.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Google Sheet with a column of Foursquare FSQ IDs, then ask it to backfill the venue details across adjacent columns. Also worth reading: Pull Foursquare Venue Tips for Qualitative Analysis and the Foursquare hub overview.