n8n Workflow: G2 Competitor Review Monitoring with ScrapingBee and Slack

This n8n workflow automates the process of monitoring competitor reviews on G2, scraping the data, storing it in Google Sheets, and notifying a Slack channel about new reviews. It's designed to keep you informed about what customers are saying about your competitors, enabling quick insights and competitive analysis.

What it does

This workflow performs the following steps:

1. Schedules Execution: The workflow is triggered on a recurring schedule (e.g., daily, weekly) to check for new reviews.
2. Fetches Competitor URLs: It reads a list of competitor G2 profile URLs from a specified Google Sheet.
3. Scrapes G2 Reviews: For each competitor URL, it uses the HTTP Request node (likely configured with a web scraping service like ScrapingBee, given the directory name) to fetch the HTML content of the G2 review page.
4. Extracts Review Data: The HTML content is then processed by the HTML node to extract specific review details (e.g., review text, rating, date, reviewer name).
5. Transforms Data: A Code node is used to format and refine the extracted data, ensuring consistency and preparing it for storage and notification.
6. Checks for New Reviews: It compares the newly scraped reviews with existing reviews in another Google Sheet to identify only the new ones.
7. Stores New Reviews: Any newly identified reviews are appended to a Google Sheet, creating a historical record.
8. Formats Slack Message: A Markdown node formats the new review information into a readable and actionable message for Slack.
9. Notifies Slack Channel: The formatted message is then posted to a designated Slack channel, alerting the team to new competitor reviews.

Prerequisites/Requirements

To use this workflow, you will need:

• n8n Instance: A running instance of n8n.
• Google Sheets Account: Configured credentials for Google Sheets to read competitor URLs and store review data.
• ScrapingBee Account (or similar web scraping service): An API key for a web scraping service capable of rendering JavaScript (like ScrapingBee) to effectively scrape G2 pages. This will be used by the HTTP Request node.
• Slack Account: Configured credentials for Slack to post notifications to a channel.

Setup/Usage

1. Import the workflow: Download the JSON provided and import it into your n8n instance.
2. Configure Credentials:
   • Google Sheets: Set up your Google Sheets credentials. You will need to specify the spreadsheet containing competitor URLs and the sheet where new reviews will be stored.
   • HTTP Request (ScrapingBee): Configure the HTTP Request node with your ScrapingBee API key and endpoint. Ensure it's set up to fetch the HTML content of G2 review pages.
   • Slack: Set up your Slack credentials and specify the channel where you want to receive notifications.
3. Update Google Sheet IDs and Ranges: Modify the Google Sheets nodes to point to your specific spreadsheet IDs and sheet names/ranges for both input (competitor URLs) and output (new reviews).
4. Adjust HTML Extraction: If G2's website structure changes, you might need to update the CSS selectors in the HTML node to correctly extract review data.
5. Customize Slack Message: Adjust the Markdown node to tailor the content and formatting of the Slack messages to your team's preferences.
6. Activate the workflow: Enable the workflow to start monitoring competitor reviews on your defined schedule.