How to get reviews from Google Business using CURL PHP

Question

I'm trying to get reviews in Google Business. The goal is to get access via curl and then get value from pane.rating.moreReviews label jsaction.

How I can fix code below to get curl?

function curl($url) {
  $ch = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/27.0.1453.94 Safari/537.36');
  $html = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);
  return $html;
}

$html = curl("https://www.google.com/maps?cid=12909283986953620003");
$DOM = new DOMDocument();
$DOM->loadHTML($html);
$finder = new DomXPath($DOM);
$classname = 'pane.rating.moreReviews';
$nodes = $finder->query("//*[contains(@jsaction, '$classname')]");
foreach ($nodes as $node) {
  $check_reviews = $node->nodeValue;
  $ses_key = preg_replace('/[^0-9]+/', '', $check_reviews);
}

// result should be: 166
echo $ses_key;

If I try do var_dump($html);, I'm getting:

string(348437) " "

And this number is changing on each page refresh.

I think it it because you used `CURLOPT_HEADER` flag in curl that return http header in responce — Mohammad, Oct 23 '18 at 09:30
And probably some contents on this page are loaded via ajax. — u_mulder, Oct 23 '18 at 09:33
Have you tried var_dump the $html? make sure thats not empty. — Saloni Uppal, Oct 23 '18 at 09:42
Verify with `var_dump` the actual value of `$html`. If it's `false` then use `curl_strerror(curl_errno($ch))` and `curl_getinfo($ch)` to inspect the cause of error. — Furgas, Oct 23 '18 at 09:42
Can you also try outputting the $ses_key value by using print_r($ses_key)? — Saloni Uppal, Oct 23 '18 at 09:49
Clearly it's not empty - it has 348437 characters. Try dumping it to some file with `file_put_contents`. — Furgas, Oct 23 '18 at 09:49
Well, `file_put_contents('some_file_your_code_will_have_write_access_to.txt', $html)`. — Furgas, Oct 23 '18 at 09:52
can you also check the output from print_r($nodes) before foreach loop? — Saloni Uppal, Oct 23 '18 at 09:54
@Furgas Already did and I'm getting same value as `var_dump($html);` — Konrad Strek, Oct 23 '18 at 09:55
@SaloniUppal Response is: `DOMNodeList Object ( [length] => 0 )` — Konrad Strek, Oct 23 '18 at 09:55
Also check https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7582302/string-is-not-empty-but-not-appearing-when-using-var-dump — Mohammad, Oct 23 '18 at 09:57
I did `echo htmlspecialchars($html);` and I can get all html view-source content but I have to wait about 30 seconds to full load. — Konrad Strek, Oct 23 '18 at 10:01
Using your code I'm getting the HTML perfectly fine, but there are no `jsaction` or `pane.rating.moreReviews` text inside it. — Furgas, Oct 23 '18 at 10:03
Your Script works but you get the complete HTML Code of the Page in on String - take a look at the source code of your PHP Script if it is executed and you will see the HTML Code between the " " that are the 348437 characters in your var ;-) — adilbo, Apr 15 '19 at 16:03

adilbo · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-11T08:24:37.480

Get Google-Reviews with PHP cURL & without API Key

How to find the CID - If you have the business open in Google Maps:

Do a search in Google Maps for the business name
Make sure it’s the only result that shows up.
Replace http:// with view-source: in the URL
Click CTRL+F and search the source code for “ludocid”
CID will be the numbers after “ludocid\u003d” and till the last number

or use this tool: https://ryanbradley.com/tools/google-cid-finder/

Example

ludocid\\u003d16726544242868601925\

HINT: Use the class ".quote" in you CSS to style the output

The PHP

<?php
/*

 Get Google-Reviews with PHP cURL & without API Key
=====================================================

How to find the CID - If you have the business open in Google Maps:
- Do a search in Google Maps for the business name
- Make sure it’s the only result that shows up.
- Replace http:// with view-source: in the URL
- Click CTRL+F and search the source code for “ludocid”
- CID will be the numbers after “ludocid\\u003d” and till the last number

or use this tool: https://pleper.com/index.php?do=tools&sdo=cid_converter

Example
-------
```TXT
ludocid\\u003d16726544242868601925\
```

> HINT: Use the class ".quote" in you CSS to style the output

###### Copyright 2019 Igor Gaffling

*/

$cid = '16726544242868601925';   // The CID you want to see the reviews for
$show_only_if_with_text = false; // true OR false
$show_only_if_greater_x = 0;     // 0-4
$show_rule_after_review = false; // true OR false
$show_blank_star_till_5 = true;  // true OR false
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- */

$ch = curl_init('https://www.google.com/maps?cid='.$cid);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla / 5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en - US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko / 20070725 Firefox / 2.0.0.6");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookies.txt');
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$pattern = '/window\.APP_INITIALIZATION_STATE(.*);window\.APP_FLAGS=/ms';
if ( preg_match($pattern, $result, $match) ) {
  $match[1] = trim($match[1], ' =;'); // fix json
  $reviews = json_decode($match[1]);
  $reviews = ltrim($reviews[3][6], ")]}'"); // fix json
  $reviews = json_decode($reviews);
  //$customer = $reviews[0][1][0][14][18];
  //$reviews = $reviews[0][1][0][14][52][0];
  $customer = $reviews[6][18]; // NEW IN 2020
  $reviews  = $reviews[6][52][0]; // NEW IN 2020
}
if (isset($reviews)) {
  echo '<div class="quote"><strong>'.$customer.'</strong><br>';
  foreach ($reviews as $review) {
    if ($show_only_if_with_text == true and empty($review[3])) continue;
    if ($review[4] <= $show_only_if_greater_x) continue;
    for ($i=1; $i <= $review[4]; ++$i) echo '⭐'; // RATING
    if ($show_blank_star_till_5 == true)
      for ($i=1; $i <= 5-$review[4]; ++$i) echo '☆'; // RATING
    echo '<p>'.$review[3].'<br>'; // TEXT
    echo '<small>'.$review[0][1].'</small></p>'; // AUTHOR
    if ($show_rule_after_review == true) echo '<hr size="1">';
  }
  echo '</div>';
}

Source: https://github.com/gaffling/PHP-Grab-Google-Reviews

@HassanRaza Yes, but you need an API Key from Google, take a look at the solution from PraveenKumar below — adilbo, Feb 12 '20 at 12:23
Where $show_blank_star_till_5 defined? Its throwing error for undefined variable $show_blank_star_till_5. — Sandeep Yadav, Mar 10 '23 at 06:01
@SandeepYadav Simple set `$show_blank_star_till_5` to `true` or `false` at the beginning of the Script! — adilbo, Mar 11 '23 at 07:31
Already did that Thanks for the suggestion. But its only showing 8 reviews. — Sandeep Yadav, Mar 13 '23 at 07:48
@SandeepYadav Yes that's normal, you can't get all with this function - but you don't need an API key, so... ;-) — adilbo, Mar 14 '23 at 06:52
@adilbo No, my google business api approved but still I am getting only 8 reviews. — Sandeep Yadav, Mar 23 '23 at 07:16

Praveen Kumar · Answer 2 · 2018-10-23T10:26:06.503

2

Please try below code

$html = curl("https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?cid=12909283986953620003&key=<google_apis_key>", "Mozilla 5.0");
$datareview = json_decode($html);// get all data in array

Ex. : http://meetingwords.com/QiIN1vaIuY

It will work for you.

Create Google Key From google console developer

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/get-api-key

edited Oct 23 '18 at 10:26

answered Oct 23 '18 at 09:55

Praveen Kumar

864
2
9
33

I know, but this is not related to my question. I will not count number of all reviews using this. – Konrad Strek Oct 23 '18 at 09:58
@Konrad :- Please try this code you will get all data (review) in JSON format. I check and I get all review http://meetingwords.com/dNQ7QNDaih – Praveen Kumar Oct 23 '18 at 10:06
@Konrad :- please check updated answered and ex . http://meetingwords.com/QiIN1vaIuY – Praveen Kumar Oct 23 '18 at 10:27
Also with an API call, you would not get all reviews from google – adilbo May 18 '21 at 07:44
@PraveenKumar seems like your URL http:://meetingwords.com/QiIN1vaIuY not working as it keeps loading. I have couple of more questions. Can you please guide me here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68862167/google-maps-place-get-average-rating-php-api – Mittul At TechnoBrave Aug 20 '21 at 12:34

How to get reviews from Google Business using CURL PHP

2 Answers2

Get Google-Reviews with PHP cURL & without API Key

Example

The PHP