Every custom Google Reviews scraper I've built eventually broke. Google's anti-bot is aggressive, the DOM changes, and maintaining it is a full-time job.
I switched to using Apify's pre-built Google Maps Reviews Scraper and it's been solid:
apify.com/compass/google-maps-reviews-scraper
What you get:
Reviewer name, rating, full review text
Review date and owner response
Review URL and place details
Clean JSON/CSV output
My workflow:
Paste Google Maps place URL as input
Set review limit (e.g. 500 reviews)
Run on Apify cloud - no local setup needed
Download CSV and pipe into my sentiment analysis pipeline
Use cases I've seen it used for:
Brand reputation monitoring across multiple locations
Competitor review analysis for real estate developers
Sentiment datasets for NLP model training
Agency audits for client Google presence
The free plan is generous enough toshow-and-tell test. Paid plans are affordable for ongoing scheduled runs.
Anyone else using Apify actors for review scraping? Curious what other workflows people have built around this data.
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