Export Google Reviews: How to Download Google Reviews for Analysis

Quick Answer: There is no "Download All Reviews" button in Google. To export Google reviews, you have five options: Google Takeout (free, but only exports reviews you wrote), Outscraper (cloud-based, ~$3 per 1,000 reviews), Apify Google Reviews Actor (pay-per-use, flexible), the Google My Business API (developer-only, limited access), or manual copy-paste (free, but painfully slow for more than a handful of reviews). For most business owners and marketers, Outscraper or Apify are the practical choices.

Why Export Google Reviews?

Google reviews sit behind one of the most frustrating limitations in local business marketing: you can read them one at a time, but you cannot download them in bulk. There is no export button, no CSV download, no "select all." For a business with 50 reviews, that is annoying. For a business with 500 reviews across multiple locations, it is a blocker.

Exporting Google reviews into a structured format — CSV, Excel, JSON — unlocks work that is impossible to do by scrolling through Google Maps:

• ✓Competitor analysis: Export reviews from 10-20 competitors in your market. Compare what customers praise, what they complain about, and where gaps exist. If every competitor in your area gets complaints about parking, that is a differentiator you can market.
• ✓Reputation tracking across locations: Multi-location businesses — franchises, restaurant chains, healthcare networks — need to monitor review sentiment across every location. Exporting reviews to a spreadsheet or dashboard lets you compare locations, flag underperformers, and track the impact of operational changes over time.
• ✓Review response planning: Exporting reviews with metadata (star rating, date, whether a business response exists) lets you filter for unanswered negative reviews that need immediate attention. Sorting by recency and rating in a spreadsheet is faster than scrolling through Google Maps.
• ✓Market research: Product managers, consultants, and agency teams use Google review data to understand customer expectations in a category. What do gym members mention most? What do hotel guests in a specific city value? The answers are sitting in public reviews.
• ✓Sentiment analysis with AI: Once reviews are in a structured format, you can paste them into ChatGPT or Claude and run sentiment analysis, theme extraction, and trend detection in minutes. That is not possible when reviews are trapped in a Google Maps scrolling interface.

The rest of this guide walks through five methods to export Google reviews — from free and manual to paid and automated. Each has different tradeoffs in cost, speed, data quality, and technical skill required.

Method 1: Google Takeout (Free — But Limited)

Google Takeout is Google's official data export tool. It lets you download data associated with your Google account, and that includes reviews — with one major caveat.

What Google Takeout Actually Exports

Google Takeout exports reviews you have written as a Google user. If you have left reviews on restaurants, stores, or services using your personal Google account, Takeout will give you a JSON file with those reviews.

It does not export reviews that customers have left on your business listing. This is the most common misunderstanding about Google Takeout and Google reviews. Business owners searching for "export Google reviews" usually want their customer reviews — and Takeout does not provide that.

Steps to Export with Google Takeout

1. ✓Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with the Google account you want to export from.
2. ✓Click "Deselect all" at the top of the product list. This prevents downloading your entire Google data archive.
3. ✓Scroll down and check "Maps (your places)" — this is where your Google reviews live.
4. ✓Click "Next step" at the bottom of the page.
5. ✓Choose your delivery method — email download link, add to Google Drive, or export to Dropbox/OneDrive.
6. ✓Select file type and size. The default (.zip, 2 GB max) works for most exports.
7. ✓Click "Create export." Google processes the request and sends you a download link — usually within minutes, sometimes up to a few hours.
8. ✓Download and unzip. Your reviews are in a JSON file inside the archive.

What You Get

The exported JSON file includes:

• ✓Review text: The full text of each review you wrote.
• ✓Star rating: Your 1-5 star rating.
• ✓Date: When you posted the review.
• ✓Business name and address: The place you reviewed.

Limitations

• ✓Only your own reviews. Cannot export reviews left by customers on your business.
• ✓No competitor reviews. Only works for reviews tied to your Google account.
• ✓JSON format only. Requires conversion if you want CSV or Excel. You can paste the JSON into a free converter or import it into Google Sheets with a script.
• ✓No filtering options. You get everything or nothing — no date range, no rating filter.

Bottom line: Google Takeout is useful for backing up your own review history. It is not a solution for business owners who want to export customer reviews or analyze competitor reviews.

Method 2: Outscraper

Outscraper is a cloud-based scraping service built specifically for Google Maps data. It is the most straightforward third-party option for exporting Google reviews at scale.

How It Works

1. ✓Create an account at outscraper.com. Free tier includes 100 elements per month.
2. ✓Navigate to the Google Maps Reviews scraper. Enter the Google Maps URL of the business you want to scrape, or enter a search query like "dentists in Austin TX."
3. ✓Configure parameters. Set the maximum number of reviews to extract, language filter, and sorting preference (newest first, highest rated, etc.).
4. ✓Run the job. Outscraper processes the extraction on its servers. Small jobs (under 1,000 reviews) typically finish in a few minutes. Larger jobs may take longer.
5. ✓Download results. Export as CSV, Excel, or JSON.

What You Get

• ✓Reviewer name and profile information.
• ✓Star rating (1-5).
• ✓Review text — the full body of the review.
• ✓Review date.
• ✓Reviewer's total review count and Local Guide status.
• ✓Business owner's response (text and date, if a response exists).
• ✓Review photos (URLs, if the reviewer attached images).

Pricing

Pay-per-result. Reviews cost roughly $3 per 1,000 results. The free tier gives you 100 elements per month — enough to test the tool on a single business listing. No monthly subscription required; you only pay for what you extract.

Limitations

• ✓Interface complexity: First-time users may find the dashboard overwhelming. There are many configuration options, and the terminology is not always intuitive.
• ✓Processing time varies: Large jobs (50K+ reviews) can take hours. The queue depends on server load.
• ✓No real-time monitoring: You submit a job and wait. There is no live preview of results as they are scraped.

Bottom line: Outscraper is the most practical option for business owners and marketers who want to export Google reviews without writing code. The pay-per-result pricing means low commitment — you can export 1,000 competitor reviews for about $3.

Method 3: Apify Google Reviews Actor

Apify is a web scraping platform with a marketplace of pre-built scrapers called "actors." The Google Maps Reviews actor handles Google review extraction and offers more flexibility than Outscraper for technical users.

How It Works

1. ✓Sign up at apify.com. The free tier includes $5 of platform credits per month.
2. ✓Find the Google Maps Reviews actor in the Apify Store. There are several options — look for the one with the highest usage and best ratings.
3. ✓Configure the actor. Enter Google Maps URLs or search queries. Set parameters: maximum reviews per place, language, review sorting, and output format.
4. ✓Run the actor. Apify executes the scraper in the cloud. You can monitor progress in real time.
5. ✓Export results. Download as CSV, JSON, or Excel. You can also push results directly to Google Sheets, a webhook, or an API endpoint.

What You Get

• ✓Review text, star rating, and date.
• ✓Reviewer name and review count.
• ✓Business owner response (if any).
• ✓Review URL — a direct link to the specific review.
• ✓Business metadata: Name, address, phone number, hours, category, and overall rating.

Pricing

Apify uses a credit-based system. The free tier includes $5 of credits per month. Paid plans start at $49/month with additional credits. Google review extraction typically costs $1-5 per 1,000 reviews depending on the specific actor and configuration.

Limitations

• ✓Steeper learning curve: Apify's interface is built for developers and data teams. If you have never used a web scraping platform, expect 15-30 minutes to understand the workflow.
• ✓Credit-based pricing is unpredictable: Different actors consume credits at different rates. It is hard to estimate costs upfront for large or variable workloads.
• ✓Actor quality varies: The marketplace has multiple Google Maps actors from different developers. Not all are equally reliable or well-maintained.

Bottom line: Apify is the better choice if you need recurring exports, API integrations, or custom scraping logic. For one-off exports, Outscraper is simpler. For scheduled, automated review monitoring pipelines, Apify has the edge.

Method 4: Google My Business API (Developer-Only)

Google provides an official API for accessing Google Business Profile data, including reviews. This is the only "sanctioned" way to programmatically access Google reviews — but it comes with significant restrictions.

How It Works

1. ✓Create a Google Cloud project at console.cloud.google.com.
2. ✓Enable the Google My Business API (now called the Google Business Profile API) in the API Library.
3. ✓Set up OAuth 2.0 credentials. You need client ID and secret for authentication.
4. ✓Request access. The API requires approval — you must submit a request form explaining your use case. Google reviews this manually, and approval is not guaranteed.
5. ✓Write code to call the API. The accounts.locations.reviews.list endpoint returns reviews for a specific business location. You need to iterate through paginated results.
6. ✓Parse the JSON response and convert to your desired format (CSV, database, etc.).

What You Get

• ✓Review text and star rating.
• ✓Reviewer display name.
• ✓Review create time and update time.
• ✓Business owner reply (text and update time).
• ✓Review name (a unique identifier for the review).

Requirements

• ✓You must own or manage the business listing. The API only provides access to reviews on listings you control. You cannot use it to export competitor reviews.
• ✓OAuth 2.0 authentication. Every API call requires a valid access token. Tokens expire and must be refreshed programmatically.
• ✓Programming knowledge. Python, JavaScript, or another language capable of making HTTP requests and handling JSON.
• ✓API approval. Not everyone who applies gets access. Google prioritizes applications from agencies, platforms, and businesses with a clear integration use case.

Limitations

• ✓Own listings only. You cannot access reviews on businesses you do not manage.
• ✓Approval bottleneck. The application process can take days to weeks, and rejection is possible.
• ✓Rate limits. API calls are subject to quotas. High-volume extraction requires careful rate limit management.
• ✓Developer overhead. Building, maintaining, and debugging the integration takes time. This is not a "set up in 10 minutes" solution.

Bottom line: The Google My Business API is the right choice for software companies building review management tools or agencies managing many client listings. For a business owner who just wants to export their reviews to a spreadsheet, it is overkill. For competitor analysis, it is not an option at all — you can only access your own listings.

Method 5: Manual Copy-Paste

The simplest method — and the most tedious. If you need a small number of reviews and do not want to pay for a tool or write code, you can copy reviews from Google Maps and paste them into a spreadsheet manually.

How It Works

1. ✓Open the business listing on Google Maps.
2. ✓Click the reviews section to expand the full review list.
3. ✓Scroll through reviews to load them. Google Maps lazy-loads reviews — you need to scroll to the bottom to load all of them.
4. ✓Select and copy each review's text, rating, reviewer name, and date.
5. ✓Paste into a spreadsheet — Google Sheets, Excel, or any other tool.

What You Get

Whatever you manually copy: review text, star rating (visible as stars, not a number — you will need to count them), reviewer name, and approximate date. No structured metadata, no machine-readable format.

Limitations

• ✓Painfully slow. Copying 10 reviews takes 5-10 minutes. Copying 100 reviews takes over an hour. Copying 500 is not realistic.
• ✓Error-prone. Manual data entry introduces typos, missed fields, and inconsistent formatting.
• ✓No metadata. You cannot easily capture reviewer total review counts, Local Guide status, business response data, or review photos.
• ✓Google Maps loading issues. The review panel sometimes fails to load older reviews, especially for businesses with thousands of reviews.

Bottom line: Manual copy-paste works if you need 5-20 reviews from a single business and do not want to set up any tools. Beyond that, the time cost outweighs the savings from not using a paid tool.

Comparison Table

What to Do After You Export

Exporting Google reviews is step one. The real value comes from what you do with the data. Here are three practical next steps:

• ✓Sentiment analysis with AI: Paste your exported reviews into ChatGPT or Claude and ask it to categorize reviews by theme, identify the most common complaints, and surface trends over time. A batch of 500 reviews can be analyzed in under a minute. For a detailed walkthrough, see our guide on competitor analysis using reviews.
• ✓Star rating distribution analysis: Sort exported reviews by star rating in a spreadsheet. Read the 1-star and 2-star reviews separately from the 5-star reviews. One-star reviews reveal deal-breakers. Three-star reviews reveal "almost good enough" problems — often the easiest operational improvements. Five-star reviews tell you what to protect and double down on.
• ✓Response gap audit: Filter for reviews that have no business owner response. Prioritize unanswered negative reviews. Businesses that respond to every review — including positive ones — consistently rank higher in local search and build more trust with potential customers reading those reviews.

What About Reviews on Other Platforms?

Google reviews are one data source — but most businesses and researchers need feedback from multiple platforms. Amazon product reviews, YouTube comments, Reddit discussions, and others each contain different types of customer insight.

Comment Exporter is a Chrome extension that exports comments and reviews from 11 platforms in one click:

• ✓Amazon: Product reviews with ratings, verified purchase status, and dates. See the Amazon review scraper.
• ✓YouTube: Video comments with like counts, replies, and timestamps.
• ✓Reddit: Thread comments with upvotes, timestamps, and nested replies. Free to use.
• ✓Steam, Hacker News, Product Hunt, Etsy, Quora, Facebook, Google Maps, Shopify: Each with platform-specific metadata.

Comment Exporter supports Google Maps reviews and consolidates all 11 platforms into a single tool at $49.99/month, with CSV and JSON output across every supported platform.

If you are running competitive analysis across multiple review sources, Comment Exporter covers Google Maps alongside Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, and seven additional platforms. For a tool-by-tool comparison of Google Maps scrapers specifically, see our Google Maps review scraper roundup.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I export Google reviews about my business for free?

Not directly. Google Takeout only exports reviews you have personally written — not reviews that customers have left on your business listing. To export customer reviews about your business, you need a third-party tool like Outscraper or Apify, which charge per result or per usage. There is no free, official way to bulk-export reviews that others have left on your Google Business Profile.

Is it legal to export Google reviews?

Exporting publicly visible Google reviews for personal research and internal analysis is generally considered legal. However, Google's Terms of Service prohibit automated scraping of their platforms. Most third-party scraping tools operate in a gray area by using rate limiting and proxies. For business use, consult your legal team. Using exported reviews for competitive analysis and internal decision-making carries less legal risk than republishing scraped reviews publicly.

What data fields can I get when I export Google reviews?

Most export methods provide reviewer name, star rating (1-5), review text, review date, and business response (if any). Third-party tools like Outscraper and Apify also capture the reviewer's total review count, Local Guide status, review photos, and business response date. The Google My Business API provides similar fields but requires developer setup. Manual copy-paste captures only what you can see on screen.

Can I export Google reviews to Excel or CSV?

Yes. Third-party tools like Outscraper and Apify export directly to CSV, Excel, or JSON. Google Takeout exports in JSON format, which you can convert to CSV using a free online converter or by opening it in Google Sheets. The Google My Business API returns JSON responses that require scripting to convert to CSV. Manual copy-paste can be pasted into a spreadsheet but requires manual formatting.

Does Comment Exporter support Google Reviews?

Yes. Comment Exporter supports Google Maps reviews as one of its 11 platforms: Reddit, YouTube, Amazon, Steam, Hacker News, Product Hunt, Etsy, Quora, Facebook, Google Maps, and Shopify. Google Maps access is included in the All Access plan, and Comment Exporter handles every supported platform in one extension.