Google reviews sentiment analysis in a spreadsheet
"Sentiment analysis" sounds like it needs a data scientist, but for one business's reviews you mostly want to know two things: what people praise and what they complain about, and whether that's changing. A spreadsheet and a few formulas get you most of the way.
1. Export the reviews
- Get Maps Reviews Exporter. It's free and needs no account.
- Open the business on Google Maps, click the extension and click Collect reviews.
- Click Export CSV and open it in Google Sheets or Excel. In the file, rating is column I, date_estimated is K and text is M.
2. Use the star rating as your first sentiment score
The simplest, most reliable signal is already there: the stars. In the first empty column (AD, right after the last export column) add a header sentiment and this formula:
=IF(I2>=4,"positive",IF(I2=3,"mixed","negative"))
Fill it down. A quick pivot table of this column by month (from column K) shows whether the share of negative reviews is going up or down.
3. Tag the themes people mention
Stars tell you how people feel; the text tells you why. Make a short list of themes that fit the business, then add one column per theme after it (AE, AF and so on). For example, for a restaurant:
| Theme | Formula (row 2) |
|---|---|
| Service | =REGEXMATCH(LOWER(M2),"service|staff|waiter|waitress|rude|friendly") |
| Wait | =REGEXMATCH(LOWER(M2),"wait|slow|took forever|minutes") |
| Price | =REGEXMATCH(LOWER(M2),"price|expensive|overpriced|cheap|value") |
| Food | =REGEXMATCH(LOWER(M2),"food|taste|delicious|cold|bland") |
| Cleanliness | =REGEXMATCH(LOWER(M2),"clean|dirty|bathroom|sticky") |
REGEXMATCH is Google Sheets. In Excel, use =ISNUMBER(SEARCH("wait",M2)) for each word instead.
4. Cross the two
For each theme, count how often it shows up in positive vs negative reviews:
=COUNTIFS(AD2:AD,"negative",AE2:AE,TRUE) (with sentiment in column AD and the first theme in AE)
The result is a small table like "Service: mentioned in 40 positive and 25 negative reviews; Wait: 3 positive, 31 negative". The themes that show up mostly in negative reviews are the ones to fix first.
5. Chart it
A stacked bar chart with themes on one axis and positive/negative counts on the other is easy to read and easy to drop into a report.
Free vs Pro
Free exports 50 reviews per place. Pro ($24.99 once, no subscription) exports every review, lets you filter by star rating and keyword before exporting, and adds a summary with the most mentioned words overall and the words used in 1 and 2 star reviews, which is a quick shortcut to step 3.
Updated 2026-10-18.