Guide
Turn a competitor's reviews into one weekly summary
For this guide and its prompts we recommend:
- Apify runs a ready-made review scraper on one public page and puts review text, stars and date into one table every week. Free plan with $5 credit per month (source)
Offers checked 21 Oct 2026
One short weekly summary of what customers say about a competitor, based on public reviews you can open and check, with one decision for your own business.
What you need
- The public review page of one competitor
- Apify and a spreadsheet
- A chat assistant
- Your own product or service page, where you can change one sentence
Recommended tools
ApifyThe new reviews arrive in a table every weekFree plan
Steps
Pick one competitor and one review page
Choose a competitor that sells to the same customers as you and has public reviews anyone can read without logging in. Read the site's terms first: if they forbid automated collection, leave it out and read the reviews by hand.
WeakWatch what people say about my competitors.
BetterHere is the public review page of one competitor of my bakery. Tell me what to check in the site's terms and robots.txt before I collect the review text and date once a week.
Collect the new reviews once a week
Use a ready-made review scraper from the Apify Store: paste the page link, choose only three fields: review text, star rating and date, and schedule one run a week. Do not collect names of reviewers.
Ask for repeating themes, with quotes
Paste the new reviews into a chat assistant and ask for the three most repeated complaints and the three most repeated points of praise, each with one short quote you can find in the table. Open two of the quotes yourself to be sure they are real.
ExampleColumns: date, stars, review text, theme, short quote, checked by me (yes or no).
Write one decision for your own business
Write one sentence you will change, add or check on your own page because of a theme that repeats, or write that you change nothing this week. Keep the summaries in one file, so after a month you can see which themes stayed.
The full instruction
Copy it into any chat assistant and fill in the brackets.
You help me read public reviews of one competitor once a week. My business: [what you sell, to whom] Reviews collected this week: [paste the table with date, stars, review text] Do four things: 1. List the three most repeated complaints and the three most repeated points of praise. 2. For each theme give one short quote that appears word for word in the reviews I pasted. 3. Suggest three possible decisions for my own business this week, one of them "change nothing", each with one line on the reason and the risk. 4. Do not guess what is not in the reviews; mark missing facts as [MISSING?]. Start with the complaints.
What you end up with
A weekly summary of what customers say about a competitor, built from public reviews you can check by quote, and one written decision per week instead of scrolling through reviews by hand.
Common mistakes
- Collecting from a site whose terms forbid automated collection.
- Trusting a quote you did not find in the table.
- Changing your offer after one review instead of a theme that repeats.
Processes that need more than one tool
Each process below uses several tools, each for the job it does best. Any chat assistant works where one is named.
Pick one competitor and one review page
Tools, in order: a chat assistant → a spreadsheet
- Choose one competitor with public reviews anyone can read.
- Ask a chat assistant what to check in the site's terms and robots.txt before you collect anything.
Recommended approach for this step: a chat assistant → a spreadsheet
Learning: you only collect from pages that allow it
The prompt for this process
I sell [what] to [whom]. I want to read the public reviews of one competitor once a week. The review page: [link] Tell me which part of the site's terms and robots.txt I must read before collecting the review text, stars and date, and what to do if automated collection is not allowed (leave it out and read by hand). Do not guess what the terms say; tell me where to look. Start with the terms.
Collect the new reviews once a week
Tools, in order: Apify → a spreadsheet
- Open a ready-made review scraper in the Apify Store and paste the page link.
- Choose only review text, star rating and date; do not collect reviewer names.
- Schedule one run a week and send the result to your spreadsheet.
Recommended for this step: Apify
Time: the new reviews arrive in a table every week
The prompt for this process
Help me set up a weekly Apify run that collects public reviews of one competitor. Review page: [link] Fields: review text, star rating, date Where the result goes: [spreadsheet name] Write the fields with a short description each, a schedule of once a week and a checklist of five things to confirm before the first run (public page, terms and robots.txt read, no reviewer names, one run a week, test run first). Start with the fields.
Ask for repeating themes, with quotes
Tools, in order: a chat assistant → a spreadsheet
- Paste the new reviews into a chat assistant and ask for the three most repeated complaints and points of praise.
- Ask for one word-for-word quote per theme and open two quotes in the table to check them.
Recommended approach for this step: a chat assistant → a spreadsheet
Quality: themes you can check by quote instead of a feeling
The prompt for this process
Read this week's public reviews of one competitor. Reviews: [paste the table with date, stars, review text] List the three most repeated complaints and the three most repeated points of praise. For each theme give one short quote that appears word for word in the reviews above. If a theme has only one review, say so. Do not guess what is not in the reviews; mark missing facts as [MISSING?]. Start with the complaints.
Write one decision for your own business
Tools, in order: a spreadsheet → a chat assistant
- Write one sentence you will change, add or check on your own page, or write that you change nothing this week.
- Keep the summaries in one file and look back after a month.
Recommended approach for this step: a spreadsheet → a chat assistant
Money: one considered change a week instead of guessing
The prompt for this process
Help me write one decision for this week. My business: [what you sell, to whom] The repeating themes I checked by quote: [paste] Suggest three decisions: change one sentence, add one thing, or change nothing. For each give one line on the reason and one line on the risk. Do not promise sales or income. Start with the decision to change nothing.
For this result we recommend these tools
This guide describes a result. These tools are one way to get there faster. Whether one pays for itself depends on your work, and we promise no result.
Apify - Apify is a web data collection platform: ready-made scrapers called Actors collect public prices, listings and reviews from websites on a schedule. In this guide it is used in “Collect the new reviews once a week”. Shop owners and analysts use it to watch competitor prices, product listings and public reviews, and the results arrive as a spreadsheet you can sort, without writing code.
Free plan with $5 credit per month (source, checked 21 Oct 2026)
We recommend a specialised tool for each process rather than one tool that does everything. Tools that try to do everything rarely do any one job really well, because no single function gets perfected. It is the same in life, in business and in relationships: spread your attention over ten places and nothing gets done properly.
