Google reviews — see what your competitors' customers actually say

Instagram tells you what your competitors say about themselves. Google reviews tell you what their customers say back. Either alone is a half-view — together they show you the gap between marketing and reality. The Google reviews feature pairs each tracked competitor with their Google Maps listing so you see both surfaces at once, fused into a single strategic read.

What it does

For any competitor you’ve added on the Competitors page, you can paste their Google Maps URL. From that point on, once a week the system pulls the new reviews that have appeared since the last check. Reviews accumulate over time, so even a venue with a slow trickle of new feedback gradually builds into a usable picture.

Two analyses sit on top of the raw reviews:

• The reviews read — a structured breakdown of one competitor’s Google data alone. Common complaints, common praises, recurring themes, where the operation is weak, where the product is strong, how often the owner replies, what specific angles you could exploit.
• The combined read — a fusion of their Instagram activity AND their reviews into one strategic per-competitor card. Headline, what they do well, where they fail, market positioning, what to copy, where to differentiate.

The combined read is the one you actually act on. It’s what the Competitors page becomes when both feeds are working.

The rule

Google reviews are slow signal — reviews trickle in over weeks, not days. Linking the place is a one-time setup; we refresh weekly. You don’t need to babysit it.

How to use it

Linking a Google listing

Open Growth → Competitors. On the card for a competitor you’ve already added, look for a thin row near the bottom that says “Also track this venue on Google Maps to add review data” with a Link Google button.

Click it. A small dialog opens asking for a Google Maps URL. Open Google Maps in another tab, search for the restaurant, click into their listing, copy the URL from the address bar, paste it back into the dialog. Hit Save & fetch reviews.

A few seconds later the dialog closes and the card now shows a small green chip with their star rating and total review count: 4.6 · 287 reviews. That’s your sign the linkage worked and the first batch of reviews has been captured.

Short links like maps.app.goo.gl/... work too — the system follows the redirect.

Reading the per-competitor detail

Click View detail on any linked card. The detail page now has three sections.

At the top — Combined analysis. A purple-tinged card with a headline like “Strong product, weak service — copy their hashtag rhythm, differentiate on speed.” Underneath, four columns: what they do well, where they fail, what to copy, where to differentiate. Plus a one-line positioning summary. This is the strategic read; everything below is the source material.

Instagram section. The original IG analysis — stat cards, follower trend, recent posts grid. Unchanged from before.

Google reviews section. Stat cards for current rating, total reviews, owner reply rate, captured reviews. A rating-trend chart if there’s enough history. The Google AI insight panel — common praises (green dots), common complaints (amber), product strengths, service weaknesses, where you can compete. When there are enough reviews spanning enough time, the insight also adds a How it’s changed over time block — whether complaints or praise have been trending up or down (e.g. “service complaints rising since March”); it stays hidden on competitors with only a handful of recent reviews. And the recent reviews list itself, with each review’s stars colour-coded and owner replies inline.

Refreshing on demand

You don’t have to wait for the weekly refresh. On the Google section, Refresh reviews pulls just the new reviews since the last check (cheap). Analyze re-runs the AI read over the accumulated reviews.

Above Analyze there’s an analysis depth control — how many of the latest reviews the AI reads: 50, 100, or 200. Fifty is the default and plenty for most venues; reach for 100 or 200 on a competitor with a long, busy review history when you want the read to weigh more of it (and a longer window for the how it’s changed over time trend). Deeper is a little slower but reads more of the picture.

On the combined card, Rebuild re-fuses the IG and Google insights into a fresh combined read. Worth doing after either side has changed materially.

Tuning how the AI reads your competitors

Open Settings → AI. Scroll to the Competitor analysis section. Three small text fields:

• Your market context — where you are, who your audience is, your price point. Example: “Sukhumvit, mostly expats and tourists, lunch-heavy, mid-price Italian.”
• Analysis lens — what perspective the AI should take. Example: “Be brutally honest about weaknesses we can attack” vs “Diplomatic, look for what we can learn.”
• Tone — how the output should sound. “Speak like a senior strategist who’s seen this before” vs “Plain language, no jargon, written for a non-marketer owner.”

These three fragments get injected into the AI’s instructions every time it analyses a competitor — both the Google-only read and the combined read. The structural prompt (what to look for, what shape to return) stays in code; you only edit these three small named fields. Leave any blank for the neutral default.

Saving the slots doesn’t re-run analyses automatically. Trigger a fresh Analyze or Rebuild to see the new tuning take effect.

What weekly refresh does

Once a week, the system walks every competitor with a linked Google listing and pulls the new reviews since the last check. It then regenerates the Google insight and the combined insight automatically.

If a refresh fails — Google rate-limit, listing changed, URL went bad — the card shows an amber warning with the error message. The link itself is preserved; the next refresh tries again. One failing handle doesn’t block the others.

Worked example

Marco runs a wood-fired pizzeria in Phrom Phong. He’s been tracking three Italian-leaning competitors on Instagram for a month. Their IG analyses tell him they post about pasta night, weekend tasting menus, and Negroni hour — all things he’s not doing.

He decides to add the Google review layer. On the Competitors page, he clicks Link Google on each card, pastes the Maps URL from each restaurant’s page. Within a minute, all three cards show green star chips: 4.7 · 412 reviews, 4.4 · 198 reviews, 4.1 · 89 reviews.

He clicks into the lowest-rated competitor’s detail page first. Combined analysis says: “Marketing-strong, service-weak — copy their plating photography, differentiate on staff training.” Common complaints from Google: slow service on Friday nights, confusion about the wine list, multiple staff turnover mentions. Common praises: the truffle pasta, the room atmosphere.

He moves to Settings → AI, fills the market context with “Phrom Phong, lunch crowd is offices, dinner is couples and small groups, mid-price Italian, expat-leaning”. Sets the analysis lens to “Honest, find opportunities we can capture in the next 90 days.” Saves.

Back to the competitor’s detail page, hits Rebuild on the combined card. The new read references his lunch crowd specifically, points out two photo angles he could borrow, and flags that the slow-service complaints are an opening for him to lead with “thirty-minute lunch” messaging.

He moves on to the second competitor with the same pattern. By the time he’s read all three, he has a clear three-week posting plan: borrow the plating style, lead with speed, run a Tuesday-night pasta service his competitors don’t have. None of this came from staring at their Instagram alone.