Google Reviews Integration

The platform displays Google Business reviews on the storefront by fetching them from the legacy Google Places API (Place Details). Reviews are loaded server-side and cached via ISR to avoid client-side API calls.

Architecture

Reviews come from one server component fetcher, lib/server/google-data.ts, which calls the legacy Places API (Place Details) with ISR caching (2-hour revalidation). There is no client-accessible reviews endpoint; the former /api/reviews/google route was removed because it called the billable Places API (New) with no callers.

Environment Variables

Setup

GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY=AIza...
GOOGLE_PLACE_ID=ChIJ...

API Call

The Places API v1 is called with specific field masks:

GET https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places/{placeId}
Headers:
  X-Goog-Api-Key: {apiKey}
  X-Goog-FieldMask: reviews,rating,userRatingCount

Data Types

type Review = {
  authorName: string
  rating: number
  text: string
  relativePublishTime: string | null
}

type ReviewsData = {
  reviews: Review[]
  totalRating: number
  totalReviews: number
}

• authorName comes from review.authorAttribution.displayName
• relativePublishTime is formatted as a readable date string (e.g., "March 15, 2026")
• totalRating is the aggregate business rating
• totalReviews is the total review count from userRatingCount

Caching

Server Component Fetcher

Uses Next.js ISR with next: { revalidate: 7200 } (2 hours):

const response = await fetch(url, {
  next: { revalidate: 7200 },
})

API Route

Uses Next.js route segment config:

export const revalidate = 7200 // 2 hours

Error Handling

The fetcher returns empty data on failure rather than throwing:

return { reviews: [], totalRating: 0, totalReviews: 0 }

Key Files