How to search a business's Google reviews for a word

Want to know whether a restaurant's reviews mention "gluten free", whether a dentist's patients talk about "pain", or how often customers say "rude" about your own staff? Google Maps shows a handful of suggested topics above the reviews, but there's no box to search for your own word. In a spreadsheet it takes one formula.

1. Export the reviews

1. Get Maps Reviews Exporter. It's free and needs no account.
2. Open the business on Google Maps, click the extension and choose a sort. Most relevant gives a good general sample; Newest tells you what people are saying now.
3. Click Collect reviews, then Export CSV, and open the file in Google Sheets or Excel.

The review text is in column M (text) and the star rating in column I (rating).

2. Find every review that mentions the word

The quickest way: turn on a filter (Data → Create a filter in Google Sheets, or Data → Filter in Excel), open the filter on column M and choose Text contains, then type your word. Only the matching reviews stay on screen.

To flag matches in a column instead, put your word in cell AD1 and this in AD2, then fill it down:

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH($AD$1,M2)),"yes","")

SEARCH ignores upper and lower case, so "Parking", "parking" and "PARKING" all match. Change AD1 and the whole column updates.

3. Count the mentions and their stars

• How many reviews mention it: =COUNTIF(M2:M,"*"&AD1&"*")
• Share of all reviews: =COUNTIF(M2:M,"*"&AD1&"*")/COUNTA(I2:I)
• Average stars of those reviews: =AVERAGEIF(M2:M,"*"&AD1&"*",I2:I)
• How many of them are 1 or 2 stars: =COUNTIFS(M2:M,"*"&AD1&"*",I2:I,"<=2")

The average is the interesting number. If the business averages 4.5 stars but reviews mentioning "wait" average 2.8, waiting is the problem people keep running into.

4. Compare several words at once

Put a list of words in AF2:AF10 (for example price, staff, clean, wait, parking) and next to each one in AG put the average formula pointing at that row: =AVERAGEIF(M$2:M,"*"&AF2&"*",I$2:I). Add the count in AH with =COUNTIF(M$2:M,"*"&AF2&"*"). Sort by AG, lowest first, and you have a ranked list of what people like and dislike, with how often each one comes up.

Tips

• Search for the root of a word to catch variations: "rude" also matches "rudely", and "clean" matches "cleanliness" and "unclean". Read a few matches to make sure the word means what you think.
• Reviews in other languages won't match an English word. The language column (N) shows which language each review is in.
• For a deeper look at the bad reviews, see sentiment analysis in a spreadsheet.

Free vs Pro

The free version exports 50 reviews at a time, enough to check a word on a small business. Pro ($24.99 once) exports every review and has a built-in keyword filter, so the export contains only the reviews that mention your word.

Updated 2026-10-23.