How to Fetch Google Maps Reviews from a Place URL

Google Maps reviews are one of the most useful sources for understanding customer feedback, local reputation, and competitor performance. But manually reading reviews from Google Maps does not work well when you need structured review data for dashboards, reports, or monitoring workflows.

Pullbay’s Google Maps Reviews endpoint lets you fetch reviews for a place using the full Google Maps place URL.

Important: Reviews Require placeUrl, Not fid

Pullbay’s Google Maps API uses different identifiers for different endpoints:

• fid is used for GET /google-maps/place/{fid}

• placeUrl is used for GET /google-maps/place/reviews

The reviews endpoint requires the full Google Maps place URL. Do not pass an FID to the reviews endpoint.

Endpoint

GET https://api.pullbay.com/google-maps/place/reviews

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
placeUrl	string	Yes	Full Google Maps place URL
maxItems	integer	No	One-shot bulk pull, 1–500 results
cursor	string	No	Cursor returned by the previous response

maxItems and cursor are mutually exclusive. Use one or the other in a request.

Approaches

Fetch Reviews with maxItems

Use maxItems when you want a simple one-shot pull.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"

BASE_URL = "https://api.pullbay.com"

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"
}

place_url = "https://www.google.com/maps/place/example-place-url"

params = {
    "placeUrl": place_url,
    "maxItems": 100
}

response = requests.get(
    f"{BASE_URL}/google-maps/place/reviews",
    headers=headers,
    params=params
)

response.raise_for_status()

data = response.json()
reviews = data.get("data", [])
credits = data.get("pricing", {}).get("creditsCharged")

print(f"Fetched {len(reviews)} reviews")
print(f"Credits charged: {credits}")

for review in reviews:
    print(review.get("stars"), review.get("dateIso"))
    print(review.get("reviewer", {}).get("name"))
    print(review.get("text"))
    print("---")

When to use this

Use this approach when you need up to 500 reviews in a single request and do not need to continue with cursor pagination.

Cursor Pagination for More Review Pulls

The reviews endpoint uses cursor-style pagination. The response can include pagination.cursor. Pass that cursor in the next request to continue.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"

BASE_URL = "https://api.pullbay.com"

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"
}

place_url = "https://www.google.com/maps/place/example-place-url"

all_reviews = []
cursor = None

while True:
    params = {
        "placeUrl": place_url
    }

    if cursor:
        params["cursor"] = cursor
    else:
        params["maxItems"] = 100

    response = requests.get(
        f"{BASE_URL}/google-maps/place/reviews",
        headers=headers,
        params=params
    )

    response.raise_for_status()

    data = response.json()
    reviews = data.get("data", [])

    all_reviews.extend(reviews)

    print(f"Fetched {len(reviews)} reviews")

    cursor = data.get("pagination", {}).get("cursor")

    if not cursor:
        break

print(f"Total reviews fetched: {len(all_reviews)}")

Useful Review Fields

A Google Maps review can include:

Field	Description
id	Review ID
link	Permalink to the review
text	Review body
stars	Rating from 1 to 5
date	Posted timestamp in Unix milliseconds
dateIso	Posted timestamp in ISO 8601 format
likes	Number of likes on the review, nullable
photos	Photo URLs attached to the review
reviewer.name	Reviewer display name
reviewer.url	Reviewer Google Maps profile URL
reviewer.totalReviews	Total reviews written by the reviewer
reviewer.totalPhotos	Total photos uploaded by the reviewer
ownersResponse	Owner response object, empty object when none
details	Free-form review metadata

Client-Side Filtering by Rating

The API does not document a server-side rating filter for reviews. If you want only low-rating reviews, fetch reviews first and filter by stars in your own code.

low_rating_reviews = [
    review for review in reviews
    if review.get("stars") in [1, 2]
]

print(f"Low-rating reviews: {len(low_rating_reviews)}")

Export Reviews to CSV

import csv

with open("google_maps_reviews.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as file:
    writer = csv.DictWriter(
        file,
        fieldnames=[
            "id",
            "stars",
            "dateIso",
            "reviewerName",
            "reviewerUrl",
            "text",
            "likes",
            "link"
        ]
    )

    writer.writeheader()

    for review in reviews:
        reviewer = review.get("reviewer") or {}

        writer.writerow({
            "id": review.get("id"),
            "stars": review.get("stars"),
            "dateIso": review.get("dateIso"),
            "reviewerName": reviewer.get("name"),
            "reviewerUrl": reviewer.get("url"),
            "text": review.get("text"),
            "likes": review.get("likes"),
            "link": review.get("link")
        })

print("Saved reviews to google_maps_reviews.csv")

Deduplication

If you fetch reviews repeatedly, store the review id and use it as a unique key.

seen_review_ids = set()
unique_reviews = []

for review in all_reviews:
    review_id = review.get("id")

    if review_id and review_id not in seen_review_ids:
        seen_review_ids.add(review_id)
        unique_reviews.append(review)

Credit Considerations

Each request is billed independently. The exact credit charge is returned in:

data["pricing"]["creditsCharged"]

Credit cost is dynamic, so read it from every response instead of assuming a fixed rate.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Possible Cause	Fix
400 Bad request	Missing or invalid placeUrl	Make sure you pass the full Google Maps place URL
400 Bad request	maxItems and cursor used together	Use only one per request
402 Insufficient credits	Not enough credits	Check Pullbay account credits
404 Not found	Review set not found	Verify the place URL
No cursor returned	No continuation cursor available	Stop pagination

Next Steps

After fetching Google Maps reviews, you can:

• Store reviews in a database

• Deduplicate reviews by id

• Filter client-side by stars

• Track new reviews over time

• Combine reviews with place details from the fid endpoint