Intermittent Google Business Profile "Unauthorized" errors - anyone else?

Experiencing weird GMB API behavior: same OAuth2 credentials work perfectly for “Get Reviews” but randomly throw “Unauthorized” errors on “Reply to Review” operations. Yesterday it worked fine, today same workflow failed, then 30 minutes later identical request suddenly worked again. No credential refresh needed, no workflow changes, permissions are correct (Manager role), and review exists without existing reply. The credentials clearly work since GET operations succeed consistently. Has anyone seen similar intermittent auth issues with Google APIs in n8n? Wondering if it’s related to Google’s internal token caching/refresh mechanisms or if I should just implement retry logic for production reliability.

implement retry logic. This is one of the few cases where retries are the correct solution.

In n8n:

  • Wrap the “Reply to Review” node

  • On 401 / 403:

    • Wait 30–120 seconds

    • Retry 2–3 times

  • Log and move on if it still fails

Do not refresh credentials or recreate them — that won’t help and just adds noise.


What I would not do

  • Don’t rebuild the OAuth credentials

  • Don’t assume permissions are wrong

  • Don’t downgrade to polling/manual replies

  • Don’t treat this as a deterministic failure

@shaurya_goel

I think everyone knows how to use AI in this era… even n8n has it’s own AI Chat Docs for infrastructure and maybe some links to relevant post in this community… if thus posts are “bombarded” with same “hallucinating” responses… this is NOT helping as all in this broken cycle!

Stop or get flagged…

No Cheers for you, since I contacted privately, and you still act like a bot.