How to Export Google Reviews (and What to Do With the File)

You have 300 Google reviews and a simple question: what do customers complain about most? Then you open your Business Profile to export Google reviews into a spreadsheet, and you discover there is no export button. There never has been.

Here's what this guide covers:

• Why there's no export button, and what Google offers instead
• The four ways to get your reviews out, with the honest trade-offs
• What columns your file needs before it's useful
• A 20-minute analysis anyone can run in Excel or Google Sheets
• Why a dated export is also your only backup

Why You Can't Just Click "Export"

Google built the reviews screen for reading and replying, one review at a time. It was never built for analysis, so it has no download option, no date filter, and no way to see everything at once.

That matters once you pass a few dozen reviews. Scrolling gives you a feeling. A spreadsheet gives you a count, and counts are how you find real patterns instead of remembering the loudest review.

The data is still yours, and Google does give owners ways to get it. They're just not where you'd look first.

The Four Ways to Export Google Reviews

1. Copy and Paste (Under About 50 Reviews)

Open your profile's reviews, sort by newest, and type each one into a sheet: date, stars, text. It's tedious, and it's also perfectly good. At 40 reviews it takes less time than learning any other method.

One wrinkle: Google shows relative dates like "3 months ago", not real ones. Write down your best estimate of the month. For trend analysis, the month is all you need.

2. Google Takeout (Free, Official, Awkward)

Google Takeout is Google's tool for downloading your own data, and Business Profile is one of the products it covers. Signed in as an owner or manager:

1. Go to takeout.google.com and choose Deselect all
2. Scroll down and tick Google Business Profile
3. Choose Next step, keep Export once, and create the export
4. Wait for the email, then download the zip file

Inside you'll find a folder for each location you manage, with its reviews in a JSON file. JSON is a format made for software, so it won't open as a tidy table.

Excel can convert it. Choose Data, then Get Data, then From File, then From JSON, and expand the records into columns. Google Sheets has no built-in JSON import, so convert in Excel first or ask an AI assistant to turn the file into a CSV.

Takeout has two other limits. It only covers profiles you manage, so it's no use for a competitor. And it's a snapshot, so next quarter you do the whole thing again.

3. The Business Profile API (Developers Only)

Google has an official API that returns every review for a verified location. If you have a developer on hand, this is the cleanest source there is.

It is not a quick project. Access is gated: Google's prerequisites require a profile that has been verified and active for at least 60 days, a website for the business, and an application that Google reviews before it turns anything on. For a single shop, that's a lot of work to produce one spreadsheet.

4. A Review Tool That Already Has Your Reviews

Tools that manage reviews connect through that same official API, with your permission, and keep a synced copy of every review. Once the copy exists, exporting it is one click.

This is how it works in ReplyOnTheFly. The reviews page has an Export button that downloads an Excel workbook or a CSV with nine columns: business, date, time, reviewer, rating, review, translation (when a review was written in another language), replied, and reply.

It exports whatever you've filtered to. Filter to your one-to-three-star reviews, or search a word like "wait", and the file contains just those rows. Multi-location accounts can tick one box to pull every location into a single sheet, up to 25,000 reviews per file, with the business name on each row.

What About Scraper Extensions?

Search for this topic and you'll find browser extensions and scripts that scrape reviews off Google Maps. Skip them for your own business.

Google's Maps terms prohibit any attempt to "mass download or create bulk feeds of the content". Scrapers also break whenever Google changes its page layout. Takeout and the API give you the same data legitimately, so there's no reason to take the risk.

What Your Export Needs to Contain

Whichever route you take, the file is only useful if each review is one row and you have these columns:

• Date (at least the month), for trends
• Star rating, as a number from 1 to 5
• Review text, the part that explains the number
• Replied, yes or no, to measure your reply habit
• Location, if you have more than one

Reviewer names are nice to have but rarely matter for analysis. Skip photos. You're looking for patterns in words and numbers.

A 20-Minute Analysis Once You Have the File

This works the same in Excel and Google Sheets. No formulas beyond a pivot table.

1. Add a month column and chart the trend. In a new column, =TEXT(B2,"yyyy-mm") turns the date in B2 into a month, and it works in both Excel and Google Sheets. Then make a pivot table with the month down the side, the count of reviews, and the average rating. You'll see two things at once: whether reviews are arriving faster or slower, and whether recent customers rate you differently than customers a year ago. Those are two of the few review metrics worth tracking.

2. Tag every review of three stars or less. Filter to the low ratings, read each one, and type a one or two word theme in a new column: wait time, price, staff, parking. Then count the tags. The top one is your to-do list, and it's often not what you expected.

3. Read the four-star reviews for the word "but". Polite customers hide complaints inside good scores. "Great food, but we waited 40 minutes" counts as a happy customer in your average and a warning in your text. That gap is why a 4.6 can still lose customers.

4. Work out your reply rate. Count the "yes" rows in the replied column and divide by the total. Then filter to "no" and see what you've been skipping. A common surprise: the angry reviews all got answers and the happy ones didn't.

5. Do the rating math. With your real counts per star in front of you, a review calculator can tell you exactly how many five-star reviews it takes to reach your target rating.

An Export Is Also Your Only Backup

Here's the reason to export even if you never analyze anything. Google removes reviews, sometimes in batches, and when a review goes, its text goes with it. You can't reply to it, quote it, or prove it existed.

Takeout only contains what's on your profile the day you run it. So a file saved with today's date is a record nothing else gives you. If reviews have disappeared on you before, a quarterly export is the cheapest insurance available.

If you'd rather not remember to do it, removed review tracking does the watching for you. It scans your full review history daily, keeps a record of what was lost, and emails you when Google removes something.

When a Spreadsheet Stops Being the Right Tool

A spreadsheet is a great way to answer a question once. It's a poor way to keep answering it.

The tagging step is the problem. Tagging 60 low reviews by hand takes an evening. Doing it again every quarter, across hundreds of new reviews, is the chore that quietly stops happening. And a spreadsheet only tells you about a problem after you sit down and look.

That's the point where software earns its place. Review Insights reads every synced review, groups them into themes, and shows how each theme is trending, so you can click from "wait time" straight into the reviews behind it. The export button is still there when someone asks for the file.

Our Google review analytics guide covers the bigger picture: which numbers to watch, how often, and what to do when one moves.

Key Takeaways

• Google Business Profile has no export button, but owners can get their reviews through Google Takeout, the official API, or a review tool that syncs them
• Takeout is free and official, but delivers JSON, only covers profiles you manage, and needs a count check
• Scraper extensions break Google's Maps terms, and you don't need them for your own reviews
• Five columns are enough: date, rating, text, replied, location
• The most valuable 20 minutes: a monthly trend, themes tagged on your low ratings, and your reply rate
• Save each export with a date, because it may be the only copy of a review Google later removes

Frequently Asked Questions