Chrome Extension Reviews Scraper

An Apify actor that scrapes reviews from Chrome Web Store extensions. Extract comprehensive review data including ratings, reviewer information, review text, dates, and metadata.

Features

• ⚡ Lightning Fast: Get the 1000's of reviews in seconds
• 🔄 No Proxy Required: We handle proxy rotation automatically - no setup needed!
• 🔍 Flexible Input: Accepts Chrome extension ID or full Chrome Web Store URL
• ⭐ Rich Data: Extracts ratings, reviewer names, review text, dates, languages, and helpful vote counts
• 🎯 Advanced Filtering: Filter by star ratings, keywords, date ranges, and more
• 📄 Pagination Support: Automatically handles pagination to get all available reviews
• 🚀 High Performance: Optimized for speed and reliability with retry logic

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
extensionIdOrUrl	String	Required	Chrome extension ID (e.g., 'cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm') or full Chrome Web Store URL
startPage	Integer	1	Page number to start scraping from
pagesToScrape	Integer	10	Maximum number of pages to scrape (-1 for all available)
reviewsPerPage	Integer	100	Number of reviews per page to scrape
maxReviews	Integer	100	Maximum number of reviews to scrape (-1 for no limit)
sortBy	String	"top"	Sort reviews by "top" (most helpful) or "recent" (most recent)
ratings	Array	[1,2,3,4,5]	Filter reviews by star ratings (1-5)
keywords	Array	[]	Filter reviews containing specific keywords
endDate	String	null	Only include reviews posted before this date (YYYY-MM-DD format)
recentDays	Integer	0	Only include reviews from the last N days (0 = disabled)
uniqueOnly	Boolean	true	Remove duplicate reviews (by review ID)

Output Data

Each review contains the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
reviewId	String	Unique review identifier
rating	Integer	Star rating (1-5)
reviewer	String	Name of the reviewer
date	String	Review date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD)
body	String	Full text content of the review
language	String	Language code of the review
userImage	String	URL to reviewer's profile image
helpfulCounts	Integer	Number of helpful votes the review received
unhelpfulCounts	Integer	Number of unhelpful votes the review received
extensionId	String	Chrome extension ID
timestamp	Integer	Unix timestamp of the review
position	Integer	Position/order of review in the results

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

{
  "extensionIdOrUrl": "https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "maxReviews": 1000,
  "reviewsPerPage": 100,
  "pagesToScrape": 10
}

Advanced Filtering

{
  "extensionIdOrUrl": "cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "ratings": [4, 5],
  "keywords": ["great", "amazing", "helpful"],
  "recentDays": 30,
  "maxReviews": 100,
  "sortBy": "recent"
}

Extension ID Only

{
  "extensionIdOrUrl": "cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm",
  "pagesToScrape": 5,
  "sortBy": "top"
}

How to Get Extension ID

You can provide either:

1. Full Chrome Web Store URL:

   https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm
   

2. Extension ID only:

   cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm
   

The extension ID is the 32-character string at the end of the Chrome Web Store URL.

Rate Limiting & Best Practices

• The scraper includes built-in delays between requests to respect Chrome Web Store's servers
• Proxy is handled by us!

Common Use Cases

• Market Research: Analyze user sentiment and feedback for extensions
• Competitive Analysis: Compare reviews across similar extensions
• Product Development: Identify common issues and feature requests
• Content Moderation: Monitor reviews for specific keywords or patterns
• Trend Analysis: Track review patterns over time

Error Handling

The actor includes comprehensive error handling:

• Invalid extension IDs or URLs are detected and reported
• Network timeouts are handled with automatic retries
• Parsing errors are logged with detailed information
• Empty responses and rate limiting are gracefully handled

Performance Notes

• Processing speed depends on the number of reviews and applied filters
• Memory usage scales with the number of reviews being processed

Support

For issues, feature requests, or questions:

1. Check the actor run logs for detailed error messages
2. Verify the extension ID or URL is correct
3. Try with smaller batch sizes if encountering timeouts
4. Contact support through the Apify platform