STEP 4 – Accept reviews API terms of service
For your app to access protected data, you will need an OAuth 2.0 client ID. This is a protocol Google uses for authorization and authentication.
How To Use The Google My Business Reviews API?
Now that you know what reviews APIs are, using the Google My Business API is the next thing to look at. First, Google lets you list, reply, return, and delete reviews. Here’s how you can work with the API-
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List Your Reviews
This feature allows you to list all reviews of a specific location. Using this, you can audit bulk reviews in bulk. All you need to do is use accounts.locations.reviews.list API, and you can return the reviews that are associated with the location.
This is what you must use on your website – https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations/{locationId}/rev
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Collect Reviews From Multiple Locations
To return reviews from varying sites, use accounts.locations.batchGetReviews API. The best part is that it works on a single request.
You must use the following code on the website- https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations:batchGetReviews { “locationNames”: [ string ], “pageSize”: number, “pageToken”: string, “orderBy”: string, “ignoreRatingOnlyReviews”: boolean }
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Respond To Existing Reviews
To enable replying to existing reviews, start by enabling Google Search or Google Maps. Keep them as services for the account. You can ask your administrator to do it for you. More info about the administrator can be found in Google Help.
To reply to reviews that are location-specific, use accounts.locations.reviews.updateReply API
On the website, use the following code- https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations/{locationId}/reviews/{reviewId}/reply { comment: “Thank you for visiting our business!” }
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Delete A Review
You can also delete a reply to specific reviews using the Google Business Reviews API. To make it happen, use accounts.locations.reviews.deleteReply API.
On the website, use the following code- https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v4/accounts/{accountId}/locations/{locationId}/rev
How To Edit Review Appearance?
When you start working with Google Reviews API, you get raw data. The data includes the reviewer’s name, rating, text date, and review text. It entirely depends on how the data is presented on your website. However, here are a few things you can customize-
- CSS Styling – The CSS script comes into use when you want to give the reviews the same style as your website. Such types of editings mainly include colors, fonts, spacing, layouts, and more.
- JavaScript – The JavaScript helps edit more complicated features such as sliders. It also helps you get collapsible text boxes to make longer reviews look neater.
- HTML Templates – The HTML elements help organize the data, style, and script them as needed. You might love using lists, cards, and grids, for example.
How To Select Which Reviews To Show?
When integrating reviews on the website, we know you would not like highlighting negative ones. However, the Google customer reviews API does not help filter reviews. It provides only those that seem most relevant to the Google algorithm.
However, you can implement logic and decide which reviews to display. Here’s how you can do it-
- Rating Filters – Get to display one review that has a certain above-star rating.
- Recent Reviews – Keep the review content fresh by choosing to show new reviews over the previous ones.
- Manual Selection – This requires slightly more effort. However, you can manually select reviews that best represent your business.
- Keyword Filters – Implement a text analysis process to filter reviews that contain certain phrases and words.
Final Thoughts
That was a quick yet detailed run-through of how businesses can get Google Business Reviews API. As you’ve seen, the process of executing the task is quite simple.
And, for all those looking for better ways to make Google reviews work for your business, add them to your website with the help of the widget. What do you think – Google reviews are a good addition to the website? Would you collect them for further analysis? We would love to hear your thoughts!
