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Creating a Google API Key

To create a Google Places API key to use with our Reviews plugin, follow the steps below.

1) Go to Google’s Cloud Console Billing page, and set up a new billing account to your Places API key.

Note: Please review the limits for the Places API usage and set a limit/quota for the maximum number of requests that can be done each day to avoid any charges outside of your expectations. To set a limit, follow the documentation here. We suggest a limit of 100 requests per day.

2) Open the Google Cloud Platform page.

3) From the drop-down menu at the top of the page, create a new project.

4) Enter a name for this project and click “Create

5) Make sure the correct project is selected on the drop-down menu at the top of the page, then click APIs & Services

6) Navigate to “Enabled APIs & services” on the left side of the screen, then click the “Enable APIs and Services

7) Click the “Places API” option

8) Enable this service 

9) Google may ask you in a popup to get started on Google Maps Platform. In this case, click Go to Google Maps Platform, which will create your new API key. If you do not see this message, continue to step 6.

Click Go to Google Maps Platform

10) Once your API key is active, you can copy it and use it on the Reviews Plugin. 

Note: if you want to restrict the API key …

To restrict your API key, you are required to use the IP Addresses application restriction. To restrict the key so that it works in the Reviews Feed plugin, please use the following IPs:

Your site IP
Smash Balloon IPs:
104.26.10.21
104.26.11.21
172.67.70.198
34.91.120.117
34.135.80.128
34.41.153.19
35.188.13.186
35.225.79.184
34.69.226.226

Add each of these individually to ensure the API key works on your site with restrictions. Please note that these may change. If your API key shows as unavailable or blocked in the future, please check in for updated values.

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