n8n Google Maps Reviews to Google Sheets Sync using SerpApi

This n8n workflow automates the process of fetching Google Maps reviews for a specific place and syncing them to a Google Sheet. It's designed to help businesses monitor their online reputation or collect customer feedback efficiently.

What it does

This workflow performs the following key steps:

1. Manual Trigger: The workflow is initiated manually, allowing you to control when the review fetching process begins.
2. Code (SerpApi Call): It executes custom JavaScript code to make an API call to SerpApi. This call is configured to search for Google Maps reviews for a specified place_id.
3. Split Out: The raw API response from SerpApi, which contains a list of reviews, is then split into individual review items.
4. Loop Over Items: Each individual review item is processed in a loop.
5. Edit Fields (Set): Within the loop, the workflow extracts specific fields from each review, such as the reviewer's name, rating, review text, and timestamp. It then renames or formats these fields to be suitable for Google Sheets.
6. If (Check for Existing Review): For each processed review, the workflow checks if a review with the same review_id already exists in the target Google Sheet.
7. Switch (Handle New/Existing Reviews):
   • If the review is new: It proceeds to add the review to the Google Sheet.
   • If the review already exists: It skips adding the review to avoid duplicates.
8. Google Sheets (Append New Row): If a review is determined to be new, the workflow appends a new row to the specified Google Sheet with the extracted review data.

Prerequisites/Requirements

To use this workflow, you will need:

• n8n Instance: A running n8n instance.
• SerpApi Account and API Key: To fetch Google Maps review data.
• Google Account: With access to Google Sheets.
• Google Sheets Credential in n8n: Configured to allow n8n to write to your Google Sheets.
• Google Sheet: A pre-existing Google Sheet where the reviews will be stored. It should have columns corresponding to the data being extracted (e.g., Reviewer Name, Rating, Review Text, Timestamp, Review ID).
• Google Place ID: The unique identifier for the Google Maps location you want to retrieve reviews for.

Setup/Usage

1. Import the workflow: Download the JSON provided and import it into your n8n instance.
2. Configure Credentials:
   • Google Sheets: Set up a Google Sheets credential in n8n if you haven't already. Ensure it has write access to the target spreadsheet.
   • SerpApi: Configure a SerpApi credential in n8n with your API key.
3. Update "Code" Node:
   • Edit the "Code" node to include your place_id for the Google Maps location you want to monitor.
   • Ensure the SerpApi API call parameters are correctly set up for fetching Google Maps reviews.
4. Update "Google Sheets" Node:
   • Select your Google Sheets credential.
   • Specify the Spreadsheet ID and Sheet Name where you want to store the reviews.
   • Verify that the "Operation" is set to "Append Row" and the "Insert Data By" is set to "Column Name" (or adjust as needed based on your sheet setup).
5. Update "If" Node:
   • Adjust the condition in the "If" node to accurately check for existing review_id values in your Google Sheet. You might need to perform a "Read Sheet" operation before this node to get existing IDs for comparison (this is not explicitly in the provided JSON but is implied by the "If" node's purpose for checking existing reviews).
6. Activate the workflow: Once configured, activate the workflow. You can then execute it manually using the "When clicking ‘Execute workflow’" trigger.