scraping reviews from playstore using google_play_scraper

Question

I am trying to scrap the reviews for an app using google_play_scraper, the play store says 16thousand reviews but I am only able to scrap 4869 reviews. what could be the reason?

As you can see I am trying to use all the languages available via a function.

I am using the below code

# Import necessary libraries
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from google_play_scraper import app, Sort, reviews_all

# Define function to scrape reviews for a specific country and language combination
def scrape_reviews(country, lang):
    reviews = reviews_all(
        'com.canda.mobileapp',
        sleep_milliseconds=0,
        lang=lang,
        country=country,
        sort=Sort.NEWEST
    )
    reviews_df = pd.DataFrame(reviews)
    try:
        reviews_df = reviews_df[['reviewId', 'userName', 'userImage', 'content', 'score', 'thumbsUpCount', 'reviewCreatedVersion', 'at', 'replyContent', 'repliedAt']].assign(Country_name=df.loc[df['country'] == country, 'Country_name'].iloc[0], Language=lang)
    except KeyError:
        reviews_df = pd.DataFrame()
    return reviews_df

# Define dataframe containing country and language combinations
data = {'Country_name': ['Belgium', 'Belgium', 'Belgium', 'Belgium', 'Czechia', 'Czechia', 'Denmark', 'Denmark', 'Germany', 'Germany', 'Greece', 'Greece', 'Spain', 'Spain', 'France', 'France', 'Croatia', 'Croatia', 'Italy', 'Italy', 'Hungary', 'Hungary', 'Netherlands', 'Netherlands', 'Austria', 'Austria', 'Poland', 'Poland', 'Portugal', 'Portugal', 'Romania', 'Romania', 'Switzerland', 'Switzerland', 'Switzerland', 'Switzerland', 'Switzerland', 'Slovakia', 'Slovakia', 'Slovenia', 'Slovenia', 'Sweden', 'Sweden', 'Finland', 'Finland'],
        'country': ['BE', 'BE', 'BE', 'BE', 'CZ', 'CZ', 'DK', 'DK', 'DE', 'DE', 'GR', 'GR', 'ES', 'ES', 'FR', 'FR', 'HR', 'HR', 'IT', 'IT', 'HU', 'HU', 'NL', 'NL', 'AT', 'AT', 'PL', 'PL', 'PT', 'PT', 'RO', 'RO', 'CH', 'CH', 'CH', 'CH', 'CH', 'SK', 'SK', 'SI', 'SI', 'SE', 'SE', 'FI', 'FI'],
        'Language': ['Dutch', 'French', 'German', 'English', 'Czech', 'English', 'Danish', 'English', 'German', 'English', 'Greek', 'English', 'Spanish', 'English', 'French', 'English', 'Croatian', 'English', 'Italian', 'English', 'Hungarian', 'English', 'Dutch', 'English', 'German', 'English', 'Polish', 'English', 'Portuguese', 'English', 'Romanian', 'English', 'German', 'French', 'Italian', 'Romansh', 'English', 'Slovak', 'English', 'Slovenian', 'English', 'Swedish', 'English', 'Finnish', 'English'],
        'lang': ['nl', 'fr', 'de', 'en', 'cs', 'en', 'da', 'en', 'de', 'en', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'en', 'fr', 'en', 'hr', 'en', 'it', 'en', 'hu', 'en', 'nl', 'en', 'de', 'en', 'pl', 'en', 'pt', 'en', 'ro', 'en', 'de', 'fr', 'it', 'rm', 'en', 'sk', 'en', 'sl', 'en', 'sv', 'en', 'fi', 'en']
       }


df = pd.DataFrame(data)

reviews_dfs = df.apply(lambda row: scrape_reviews(row['country'], row['lang']), axis=1)
combined_reviews_df = pd.concat(reviews_dfs.to_list(), ignore_index=True)

#remove duplicates
combined_reviews_df = combined_reviews_df.groupby(['content', 'Language']).first().reset_index()
combined_reviews_df

Answer 1

I guess that out of these 16k reviews only 4869 contains "review" and other 11k are just ratings without any comment.

To verify the quantity of "reviews", you could check and call a Google Play Product SearchAPI, in which you could get all selected product reviews.