Creating a Google business reviews slider in Pro using the external API function

[spedney]

Hi everyone! I’m so glad to be a Themeco customer and wanted to share my experience…

I recently set up a native Google Business reviews slider in Themeco’s Pro theme, and I wanted to share my process with anyone interested. I initially tried using the Google API, but I quickly realized it only allows access to a limited number of reviews and doesn’t offer much control over the display order – a bit limiting for anyone wanting a more customizable approach.

To work around this, I used serpapi.com , which has worked perfectly for my needs! Here’s a quick rundown of the steps I followed:

1. Sign Up on serpapi.com

serpapi offers a free account with 100 API calls per month. With my cache setting in Pro set to update daily , 100 calls per month is more than enough to keep reviews fresh without exceeding the limit.

2. Configure serpapi to Fetch Reviews

Once you’re signed up, serpapi provides a simple setup to start retrieving Google Business reviews. The documentation is helpful, and setting up your unique API key and configuring the reviews retrieval is straightforward.

3. Integrate serpapi with Pro’s External API Tool

In Pro’s settings, you can use the External API tool to fetch reviews directly from serpapi. This gives you flexibility with how and when reviews are displayed.

4. Customize Your Reviews Slider

With Pro’s native slider and the fetched reviews data, you can adjust the order and styling to better fit your brand. Since serpapi’s setup provides more control, it was easy to set up the display exactly how I wanted it.

Overall, this approach allowed me to create a clean, regularly updated reviews slider without the limitations of Google’s native API. I hope this helps others looking for a similar solution! Thank you to Themeco for such a great tool and your amazing support to our whole community of users!

I used all of this to help my wife with her headshot photography business website - you can see the slider with the reviews about half way down the page here:
https://www.desiredfocus.com/professional-headshots-columbus-ohio/

[marc_a]

Hey Steve,

Thanks you for sharing your ideas on how to connect Google Business Reviews to our native slider using the External API. We really appreciate your time and effort.

Cheers!