Google Reviews contains valuable data -- review text, star rating, reviewer profile, review date, and more. Scraping this data directly means dealing with anti-bot detection, CAPTCHAs, IP rotation, and constantly breaking selectors. The Scavio API handles all of that and returns clean, structured JSON from a single POST request.
This tutorial shows you how to scrape Google Reviews using PHP and the Scavio API. By the end, you will have a working PHP script that fetches real-time Google Reviews data and parses the results.
Prerequisites
- PHP installed on your machine
- A Scavio API key (free tier includes 50 credits on signup -- no credit card required)
Step 1: Install Dependencies
cURL is built into PHP, so there is nothing to install.
# The cURL extension ships with PHPStep 2: Make Your First Google Reviews Search
Send a POST request to the Scavio Google Reviews API endpoint with your query. The API returns structured JSON with review text, star rating, reviewer profile, and more.
<?php
// Reviews are per place: get a data_id (or place_id) from POST /api/v2/google/maps/search
// first. Owner responses are not part of this response.
$apiKey = "sk_live_your_key";
$data_id = "0x89c259869319e7af:0x54953953a5ede7bb";
$ch = curl_init("https://api.scavio.dev/api/v2/google/maps/reviews");
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"Authorization: Bearer $apiKey",
"Content-Type: application/json",
],
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode(["data_id" => $data_id, "num" => 10, "sort_by" => "newest"]),
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$data = json_decode($response, true);
print_r($data);Step 3: Example Response
The API returns structured JSON. Here is an example response for a Google Reviews search:
{
"search_parameters": { "engine": "google_maps_reviews", "data_id": "0x89c259869319e7af:0x54953953a5ede7bb", "num": 10 },
"place_info": { "title": "Jives Media", "address": "800 6th Ave Ste 36C, New York, NY 10001", "rating": 4.9, "reviews": 199 },
"reviews": [
{
"position": 1,
"rating": 5,
"date": "a year ago",
"iso_date": "2025-06-11T00:00:00Z",
"snippet": "We have been working with the Jives Media team for over a year now...",
"likes": 0,
"user": { "name": "P Gol", "link": "https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/100121084533228462911", "local_guide": true }
}
],
"pagination": { "next_page_token": "CAESY0NBRVFB..." },
"response_time": 3720,
"credits_used": 1,
"credits_remaining": 4811
}Every field is structured and typed -- no HTML parsing, no CSS selectors, no regex extraction. Your PHP code can access any field directly.
Step 4: Full Working Example
Here is a complete, runnable PHP script that searches Google Reviews and prints the results:
<?php
/**
* Fetch Google Reviews data with the Scavio API.
* POST /api/v2/google/maps/reviews - rows come back under reviews.
*/
// Reviews are per place: get a data_id (or place_id) from POST /api/v2/google/maps/search
// first. Owner responses are not part of this response.
const API_URL = "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v2/google/maps/reviews";
function fetch_google_reviews(string $data_id): array {
$apiKey = getenv("SCAVIO_API_KEY");
$ch = curl_init(API_URL);
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"Authorization: Bearer $apiKey",
"Content-Type: application/json",
],
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode(["data_id" => $data_id, "num" => 10, "sort_by" => "newest"]),
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
throw new Exception("Scavio API error: $httpCode");
}
return json_decode($response, true);
}
$data = fetch_google_reviews("0x89c259869319e7af:0x54953953a5ede7bb");
echo json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);Why Use Scavio Instead of Scraping Google Reviews Directly?
- No proxy management. Direct scraping requires rotating proxies to avoid IP bans. Scavio handles all of this server-side.
- No CAPTCHA solving. Google Reviews aggressively blocks automated requests. Scavio returns clean data every time.
- Structured JSON output. No HTML parsing or CSS selector maintenance. Get typed, consistent data from every request.
- Multi-platform in one API. Search Google, Amazon, YouTube, and Walmart from the same API key with the same authentication pattern.
- Free tier included. 50 credits on signup with no credit card required. Each search costs 1 credit.