# Chrome Web Store Review & Ranking Monitor (`conceivable_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor`) Actor

Tracks your Chrome extensions' ratings, review sentiment, install-count range, and best-effort category rank against named competitors. £0.002 per extension checked.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/conceivable\_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [joseph fadero](https://apify.com/conceivable_extension) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $6.00 / 1,000 review sentiment summary generateds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Chrome Web Store Review & Ranking Monitor

Tracks your own Chrome extensions' ratings, review sentiment, install-count range, and best-effort category ranking against named competitor extensions. £0.002 per extension checked.

### What it does

Give it a list of Chrome Web Store extension IDs — your own extension plus any competitors you want to benchmark against — and it returns, per extension:

- Current rating and rating count
- Install count, as the official Chrome Web Store display range (see **Important limitation** below)
- Recent reviews (rating, text, date)
- An LLM-generated sentiment summary of those recent reviews (optional)
- Best-effort category rank (see **Important limitation** below)

### Inputs

| Field | Default | Description |
|-------|---------|-------------|
| `extensionIds` | `["ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh", "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom"]` (uBlock Origin Lite, AdBlock) | Chrome Web Store extension IDs — the 32-character ID from the extension's store URL |
| `trackReviews` | `true` | Fetch recent reviews and run a sentiment-summary pass |

Find an extension's ID in its store URL: `https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/{name}/{extensionId}` — the ID is the last path segment.

### Output fields

Each dataset record includes: `extensionId`, `extensionName`, `found`, `storeUrl`, `installCount`, `rating`, `ratingCount`, `categoryRank`, `category`, `description`, `version`, `firstSeenOrPublishedAt` (approximate, see note below), `sizeOnDisk`, `recentReviews[]` (`rating`, `text`, `date`), `reviewsAvailable`, `sentimentSummary`, `warnings[]`, `scrapedAt`.

### Important limitations (please read)

**`installCount` is always a range, never an exact number.** The Chrome Web Store itself never publicly displays a precise install count anywhere — only rounded tiers such as "10,000,000+ users", "100,000+ users", "1,000+ users", etc. This actor mirrors that same official bucketing convention rather than fabricating false precision. Treat `installCount` as a rough popularity tier, not a KPI to trend at a granular level.

**`categoryRank` is always `"best-effort: not available"`.** Chrome Web Store does not expose an extension's position within its category anywhere on the extension's own page. The only way to approximate it is to scrape category browse-listing pages and search for the extension's position — which live testing during development confirmed is fragile, not guaranteed to reflect the real in-store ordering, and not something Google documents or stabilizes. Rather than force a scrape that would silently break or mislead, this field is always reported as explicitly unavailable so you never mistake a guess for a real ranking.

**Review text and rating/install stats require a live extension.** If an extension has been delisted, removed, or unpublished (for example, classic uBlock Origin — an MV2 extension Google removed from the store in 2026), the actor reports `found: false` with a clear warning rather than fabricating data.

### Technical notes

Chrome Web Store migrated fully to `chromewebstore.google.com/detail/{slug}/{id}` (the legacy `chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...` URL still works but is only a redirect). The URL slug is cosmetic — only the 32-character extension ID matters for resolving a listing.

For a currently-published extension, its name, rating, rating count, description, category, and install metric are present as real server-rendered JSON embedded directly in the page HTML (Google's `AF_initDataCallback` pattern, the same embedded-JSON-state approach used on other modern Google properties) — no headless browser is required to retrieve them. Recent review text, author, rating, and date are likewise real, server-rendered data on the extension's dedicated `/reviews` sub-page.

The one piece of data that is **not** available this way is an authenticated live RPC (`batchexecute`) that the store's front-end calls client-side for certain interactive UI states — during development this was found to require a real logged-in browser session and, when tested against a real headless browser, actually triggered Google's bot/consent interstitial *more* often than a plain HTTP request. We deliberately did not build on that fragile path since none of this actor's required output fields depend on it.

### Sentiment summary

When `trackReviews` is enabled, the actor makes a single Anthropic API call per extension (not per review) over its most recent reviews to produce a short sentiment summary — what users like, common complaints, and whether the trend looks positive, mixed, or negative. Requires `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` to be set in the actor's environment; if it is not set, or no review text was retrieved, sentiment is skipped gracefully with a warning in the extension's `warnings[]` field rather than failing the run.

### Pricing (Pay Per Event)

| Event | Price | Charged when |
|-------|-------|--------------|
| Actor Start | $0.05 | Once per run (built-in) |
| Extension Stats Checked | $0.002 | Per extension successfully checked (install range, rating, rating count captured) |
| Category Rank Captured | $0.004 | Additionally, only if a best-effort category position is ever successfully determined (currently never fires — see limitation above) |
| Review Sentiment Summary Generated | $0.006 | `trackReviews` is on and the LLM sentiment pass actually ran |

# Actor input Schema

## `extensionIds` (type: `array`):

Chrome Web Store extension IDs to track — the 32-character alphanumeric ID from the extension's store URL (e.g. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/\_/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh). Track your own extension(s) alongside named competitors to compare ratings and sentiment.

## `trackReviews` (type: `boolean`):

Fetch recent reviews and run a one-shot LLM sentiment-summary pass per extension (requires ANTHROPIC\_API\_KEY to be set; skipped gracefully with a warning if it is not).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "extensionIds": [
    "ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh",
    "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom"
  ],
  "trackReviews": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `resultsDatasetUrl` (type: `string`):

Dataset of extension stats records produced by this run.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "extensionIds": [
        "ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh",
        "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("conceivable_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "extensionIds": [
        "ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh",
        "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("conceivable_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "extensionIds": [
    "ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh",
    "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom"
  ]
}' |
apify call conceivable_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,conceivable_extension/chrome-web-store-review-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/buhXwqVu4AjdGl8Rc/builds/be2LeH0j86Xzf6jQ2/openapi.json