Conversation
supportI’m a bit confused how this plugin can do what it does. Google’s policy is very clear about caching reviews especially using Google Places API, meaning this plugin with the caching feature would be violating that ruling unequivocally and would also violate their requirements for attribution and data freshness. Meaning every site that has this plugin activated, would be at risk of getting canned by Google. So, I’m just very confused whether there is a loop hole that I’ve missed or the plugin is just kind of yolo about the situation?
@ottoraja The plugin stores reviews locally once they have been retrieved. Without this, every page load would require a fresh API request, with costs tied directly to site traffic. For almost all users this would be completely unworkable, both financially and in terms of performance, as the server would need to process each request individually and visitors would experience significant delays. While Google’s terms state restrictions around caching, their application of those terms is at their own discretion. In practice, caching is the only viable method of displaying reviews at scale. I have raised this directly with Google support, and they were unable to suggest any workable alternative beyond the approach I have implemented. There are no other solutions that would meet both performance and cost requirements, which is why this method is the only practical option. It is also worth noting that all other review plugins and similar integrations adopt the same approach, as there is no technically feasible way of achieving the same result without local storage of the data.
@ottoraja The plugin stores reviews locally once they have been retrieved. Without this, every page load would require a fresh API request, with costs tied directly to site traffic. For almost all users this would be completely unworkable, both financially and in terms of performance, as the server would need to process each request individually and visitors would experience significant delays. While Google’s terms state restrictions around caching, their application of those terms is at their own discretion. In practice, caching is the only viable method of displaying reviews at scale. I have raised this directly with Google support, and they were unable to suggest any workable alternative beyond the approach I have implemented. There are no other solutions that would meet both performance and cost requirements, which is why this method is the only practical option. It is also worth noting that all other review plugins and similar integrations adopt the same approach, as there is no technically feasible way of achieving the same result without local storage of the data.