🔥 Google Trends : Trending Search Scraper — Real-Time Trending Keywords API

Google Trends Trending Search Scraper is a fast, production-grade Apify Actor for Google Trends scraping, trending searches extraction, and real-time keyword research. It reads the live Trending Now list from Google Trends for any country, and returns one clean row per trending search term — with search volume, growth percentage, category, related queries, trend start time, and the news articles behind each trend.

Every trending term is written to your Apify Dataset the moment it is found, so you can watch results stream in live and export them to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML — or pull them straight from the Apify API.

💡 Need a custom version, private integration, or a tailored trends pipeline? Email hello.dataminds@gmail.com.

Google offers no official public Google Trends API. This Actor is the reliable, no-code Google Trends API alternative for SEO teams, newsrooms, marketers, analysts, and AI agents.

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📑 Table of contents

• What is Google Trends Trending Search Scraper?
• Main features
• Who is this Actor for?
• What data you can extract
• Output format (Dataset)
• Example output (JSON)
• Quick start
• Input parameters reference
• Countries & categories supported
• Smart network handling & anti-blocking
• Integrations: Make, n8n, Zapier, Google Sheets, MCP
• Pricing & how to control cost
• Best use cases
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Troubleshooting
• Help, support & custom builds
• Is web scraping legal?
• SEO keywords targeted

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🔥 What is Google Trends Trending Search Scraper?

Google Trends Trending Search Scraper is an Apify-hosted Google Trends API alternative that turns the public Google Trends Trending Now feed into clean, structured, analysis-ready data. Unlike generic scrapers, this Actor:

• Collects trending searches for 55+ countries — in bulk, in a single run.
• Returns one row per trending term, ready for spreadsheets, BI tools, and pay-per-result pipelines.
• Captures search volume in both formatted (500K+) and raw numeric (500000) form.
• Measures momentum with the growth percentage Google reports for each trend.
• Attaches related news — headline, publisher, publish time, thumbnail and article URL.
• Reads Google Trends URLs you paste in bulk, so saved links and dashboards work as-is.
• Streams results live into an Apify Dataset with five ready-made table views.

If you need a trending keywords API, real-time search trends feed, newsjacking radar, or a daily trending topics database, this is the Actor.

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✨ Main features

Feature	What it gives you
🌍 55+ countries, bulk input	Select many countries at once — each is collected independently, so one failure never stops the rest.
🔗 Bulk Google Trends URLs	Paste any number of trends.google.com/trending?geo=… links. Country, time window and category are read straight from each URL.
⏱️ 4 time windows	Past 4h, 24h, 48h, or 7 days — from breaking bursts to weekly patterns.
🏷️ 19 category filters	Sports, Technology, Entertainment, Politics, Health, Business & Finance, Climate and more.
📈 Volume + growth	trend_volume (1M+), trend_volume_raw (1000000) and trend_delta_percent for sorting and scoring.
🔗 Related search queries	Every associated query people typed alongside the trend — a ready-made long-tail keyword list.
📰 Related news articles	Headline, source, publish timestamp, thumbnail and link for each trend. Full coverage or a fast headlines-only pass.
↕️ Built-in sorting	Keep Google's own order, or sort by volume, recency, or growth before the limit is applied.
💾 Real-time streaming	Rows land in your Dataset as they are found — a stopped run still leaves usable data.
📊 5 output table views	✨ Overview · 📊 Volume & Momentum · 🔗 Related terms · 📰 News · 🕒 Timing & source.
🛡️ Automatic network fallback	Starts direct (no proxy), and only escalates to a datacenter then residential proxy if Google pushes back.
⚡ No browser needed	Pure HTTP with browser-grade fingerprints — seconds per country, not minutes.
🧭 Self-healing parser	Field positions are re-derived from every response, so an upstream layout change degrades one field instead of breaking the run.

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👥 Who is this Actor for?

• 🔍 SEO specialists & content strategists — catch rising queries before competitors write about them.
• 📰 Newsrooms & editors — a live newsjacking radar with the articles already attached.
• 📈 Market researchers & analysts — track category-level demand across markets.
• 📱 Social media & performance marketers — align posts and campaigns with what is trending today.
• 🛒 E-commerce & retail teams — spot product and brand spikes as they happen.
• 🤖 AI engineers & agent builders — feed live trend context into LLM pipelines, RAG systems, and MCP-connected agents.
• 📊 Data teams — build a historical trending database by scheduling hourly or daily runs.

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📋 What data you can extract

Field	Type	Description
rank	number	Position in the trending list for that country
term	string	The trending search query
category	string	Human-readable category name(s)
category_ids	array	Numeric category IDs
trend_volume	string	Formatted search volume, e.g. 1M+, 500K+
trend_volume_raw	number	Raw numeric volume for sorting and analysis
trend_delta_percent	number	Growth percentage reported for the trend
is_active	boolean	Whether the trend is still running
started / started_timestamp	string / number	When the trend started (local text + epoch)
trend_start / trend_end	string	UTC start and end of the trend window
trend_timeframe	object	{ start, end } convenience object
related_terms	array	Related search queries people used
related_terms_count	number	How many related queries were returned
related_terms_text	string	Same list, comma-joined for spreadsheets
related_news	array	Articles: title, url, source, published, published_timestamp, image
news_count	number	How many articles were attached
top_news_title / top_news_source / top_news_url / top_news_published / top_news_image	string	Flattened headline article for quick scanning
geo / country	string	Country code and country name
language	string	Language used for the request
timeframe_hours	string	Time window: 4, 24, 48, 168
trends_url	string	Direct Google Trends link to explore the term
source_url	string	The trending page this row came from
scraped_at	string	Collection timestamp
article_ids	array	(optional) Raw article identifiers
orderNo	number	Global row number across the whole run

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📤 Output format (Dataset)

Every trending term is one dataset item, pushed the instant it is ready. The Output tab ships with five table views so you can read the same data through different lenses:

View	Shows
✨ Overview	Rank, term, category, volume, growth %, news count, country, start time, explore link
📊 Volume & Momentum	Rank, term, formatted + raw volume, growth %, still-trending flag, geo, window
🔗 Related search terms	Rank, term, related-query count, joined text and full list
📰 Related news	Rank, term, article count, top headline, source, publish time, link, thumbnail, all articles
🕒 Timing & source	Rank, term, start (local + epoch + UTC), end, window, language, collected-at, source page

A run summary (totals per country, network route used, and any countries that returned nothing) is stored in the run's key-value store under the RUN-SUMMARY key.

Export everything as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML, or RSS from the Console, or via the Apify API.

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🧪 Example output (JSON)

{
  "rank": 1,
  "term": "tmobile outage",
  "category": "Technology",
  "category_ids": [18],
  "trend_volume": "1M+",
  "trend_volume_raw": 1000000,
  "trend_delta_percent": 1000,
  "is_active": true,
  "started": "2026-07-28 02:10:00",
  "started_timestamp": 1785183000,
  "trend_start": "2026-07-27 20:10:00 UTC",
  "trend_end": null,
  "trend_timeframe": { "start": "2026-07-27 20:10:00 UTC", "end": null },
  "related_terms_count": 82,
  "related_terms": ["t mobile outage", "tmobile", "is t mobile down", "tmobile down detector"],
  "related_terms_text": "t mobile outage, tmobile, is t mobile down, tmobile down detector",
  "news_count": 3,
  "top_news_title": "T-Mobile breaks silence over nationwide outage",
  "top_news_source": "Mashable",
  "top_news_url": "https://mashable.com/tech/t-mobile-outage-statement-amid-customer-dissatisfaction",
  "top_news_published": "2026-07-28 21:21:17",
  "top_news_image": "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSO3EFvzScB1Zt",
  "related_news": [
    {
      "title": "T-Mobile’s huge outage is officially over.",
      "url": "https://www.theverge.com/tech/971930/t-mobiles-huge-outage-is-officially-over",
      "source": "The Verge",
      "published_timestamp": 1785256068,
      "published": "2026-07-28 22:27:48",
      "image": "https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRe_JrKAwtA8DPg"
    }
  ],
  "geo": "US",
  "country": "United States",
  "language": "en-US",
  "timeframe_hours": "24",
  "trends_url": "https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=tmobile+outage&hl=en-US",
  "source_url": "https://trends.google.com/trending?geo=US&hl=en-US&hours=24",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-28 23:02:35",
  "orderNo": 1
}

With 300 trending queries you get 300 individual rows — ready for direct analysis, dashboards, or export.

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🚀 Quick start

Run in Apify Console

1. Log in at console.apify.com → Actors.
2. Open 🔥 Google Trends Trending Search Scraper.
3. Pick one or more 🌍 countries (and/or paste 🔗 Google Trends URLs in bulk).
4. Choose a 🕒 time window — Past 4h, 24h, 48h, or 7 days.
5. (Optional) Filter by 🏷️ category, set 📬 max trends per country, and pick a 📰 news mode.
6. Click Start ▶️ and watch trends stream into the Output tab in real time.
7. Switch between the ✨ Overview / 📊 Volume / 🔗 Related terms / 📰 News / 🕒 Timing tabs.
8. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

No coding required.

Run via API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
        "countries": ["US", "GB", "IN"],
        "timeframe": "24",
        "categories": [],
        "maxItems": 50,
        "newsMode": "full"
      }'

Run from Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("<ACTOR_ID>").call(run_input={
    "countries": ["US"],
    "timeframe": "24",
    "maxItems": 25,
    "newsMode": "full",
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["rank"], item["term"], item["trend_volume"])

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🛠️ Input parameters reference

🚀 Start here

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	["https://trends.google.com/trending?geo=US&hl=en-US&hours=24"]	Google Trends Trending Now URLs — bulk supported. Country, hours and category are read from each URL.
countries	array	["US"]	One or more country codes. Bulk supported; each country is collected independently.
extraCountryCodes	array	[]	Any two-letter code not in the picker, e.g. LK, NP, QA. Merged with your selection.

⏱️ Trend window & filters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
timeframe	string	"24"	4, 24, 48, or 168 hours. Wider window = far more terms.
categories	array	[]	Category IDs to keep. Empty = all categories.
maxItems	integer	25	Max trends saved per country. 0 = everything Google returns.
language	string	"en-US"	Language for trend labels and news headlines.
sortBy	string	"default"	default (Google's order), volume, recency, or growth.

📰 News enrichment

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
newsMode	string	"full"	full (news for every trend), rss (fast headlines pass over top trends), off.
newsLimit	integer	25	Max trends per country to enrich with news. 0 = all.
newsConcurrency	integer	4	Parallel news lookups.

🧩 Fields to include

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
includeRelatedTerms	boolean	true	Include the related-query list and its joined text form.
includeArticleIds	boolean	false	Include raw article identifiers for advanced pipelines.

🛡️ Network & proxy

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
proxyConfiguration	object	{ "useApifyProxy": false }	Default is no proxy. Fallback to datacenter → residential is automatic. Turn Apify Proxy on only to start from a proxy immediately.

⚙️ Performance & retries

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxConcurrency	integer	4	Countries collected in parallel.
maxRequestRetries	integer	3	Attempts per request, with exponential backoff and jitter.
pageLoadTimeoutSecs	integer	120	Per-request timeout in seconds.
requestsPerSecond	number	6	Global outbound request ceiling. Automatically reduced if Google throttles.
requestDelaySeconds	number	0.5	Extra randomised pause before each request.

🔧 Diagnostics

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
debugLog	boolean	false	Adds DEBUG-level detail (per-request outcomes, retry timings, network fallbacks).

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🌍 Countries & categories supported

Countries (55+ in the picker, plus any two-letter code via extraCountryCodes): 🇺🇸 US · 🇬🇧 GB · 🇨🇦 CA · 🇦🇺 AU · 🇮🇳 IN · 🇧🇩 BD · 🇵🇰 PK · 🇩🇪 DE · 🇫🇷 FR · 🇮🇹 IT · 🇪🇸 ES · 🇳🇱 NL · 🇧🇪 BE · 🇨🇭 CH · 🇦🇹 AT · 🇸🇪 SE · 🇳🇴 NO · 🇩🇰 DK · 🇫🇮 FI · 🇮🇪 IE · 🇵🇹 PT · 🇬🇷 GR · 🇵🇱 PL · 🇨🇿 CZ · 🇭🇺 HU · 🇷🇴 RO · 🇺🇦 UA · 🇷🇺 RU · 🇹🇷 TR · 🇮🇱 IL · 🇸🇦 SA · 🇦🇪 AE · 🇪🇬 EG · 🇳🇬 NG · 🇰🇪 KE · 🇿🇦 ZA · 🇲🇦 MA · 🇧🇷 BR · 🇲🇽 MX · 🇦🇷 AR · 🇨🇱 CL · 🇨🇴 CO · 🇵🇪 PE · 🇯🇵 JP · 🇰🇷 KR · 🇨🇳 CN · 🇹🇼 TW · 🇭🇰 HK · 🇸🇬 SG · 🇲🇾 MY · 🇹🇭 TH · 🇻🇳 VN · 🇵🇭 PH · 🇮🇩 ID · 🇳🇿 NZ

Categories:

ID	Category	ID	Category
1	🚗 Autos & Vehicles	11	📦 Other
2	💄 Beauty & Fashion	13	🐾 Pets & Animals
3	💼 Business & Finance	14	🏛️ Politics
4	🎬 Entertainment	15	🔬 Science
5	🍔 Food & Drink	16	🛍️ Shopping
6	🎮 Games	17	🏆 Sports
7	🏥 Health	18	💻 Technology
8	🎨 Hobbies & Leisure	19	✈️ Travel & Transportation
9	🎓 Jobs & Education	20	🌍 Climate
10	⚖️ Law & Government

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🛡️ Smart network handling & anti-blocking

Most trending scrapers force a proxy on every request, which costs money and slows runs down. This Actor is smarter:

1. 🔓 Direct connection first — no proxy, no proxy cost, fastest possible response.
2. 🏢 Datacenter proxy — used only if Google rejects or blocks a request.
3. 🏠 Residential proxy — used if the datacenter route is refused too, with 3 automatic retries on fresh addresses.
4. 📌 Sticky route — once the Actor steps up, that route is kept for the rest of the run; no flip-flopping.
5. 📣 Fully logged — every fallback is announced in the run log so you always know which route produced your data.

On top of that:

• ⏳ A global request-rate ceiling keeps total throughput polite no matter how many countries run in parallel.
• 🐢 If Google starts throttling, the allowance halves automatically and recovers gradually.
• ♻️ Transient failures are retried with exponential backoff + jitter.
• 🧭 Browser-grade TLS and HTTP fingerprints mean far fewer challenges than a plain HTTP client — with none of the cost of a headless browser.

You do not have to configure any of this. It just works.

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🔌 Integrations: Make, n8n, Zapier, Google Sheets, MCP

Connect trending data to the rest of your stack:

• ⚡ Make (Integromat) — Apify + Make
• 🔄 n8n — Apify + n8n
• 🔧 Zapier — Apify + Zapier
• 📊 Google Sheets / Drive — push trending rows straight into a live spreadsheet
• 💬 Slack — post the day's top trends to a channel
• 🤖 MCP for AI agents — Apify MCP Server lets Claude, Cursor and other agents call this Actor as a tool
• 🪝 Webhooks & scheduler — trigger downstream jobs when a run finishes; schedule hourly, daily, or weekly runs

Full list: Apify integrations.

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💸 Pricing & how to control cost

This Actor uses pay per event — you pay for the trending terms you actually receive.

Billable event

Event	When it fires
trending-result	Once per trending term saved to the dataset

Nothing is charged for terms that are filtered out, for countries that return nothing, or for retries.

To control cost, tune:

Setting	Effect
📬 maxItems	The single biggest lever — caps saved rows per country.
🌍 countries	Each extra country multiplies the row count.
⏱️ timeframe	4 hours returns a short list; 168 hours can return hundreds of terms per country.
🏷️ categories	Narrow to your niche instead of paying for every category.
📰 newsMode	off is the cheapest and fastest; rss is a light middle ground; full is richest.
🔢 newsLimit	Enrich only the top N trends with news.
🧩 includeRelatedTerms	Turn off for slimmer rows and faster exports.

💡 Tip: start with maxItems: 10 and newsMode: "off" for a cheap smoke test, then scale up.

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💡 Best use cases

🔍 SEO & content strategy — find rising queries and their long-tail variants before the competition publishes.

📰 News & media monitoring — a live newsjacking feed with the source articles already attached.

📊 Market research — compare category demand across dozens of markets in one run.

📈 Social media marketing — schedule hourly runs and post while a trend is still climbing.

🛒 E-commerce & retail — catch product, brand, and seasonal spikes as they form.

🤖 AI & data pipelines — feed real-time trend context into LLMs, agents, dashboards, and alerting systems.

🌍 Multi-market intelligence — spot which trends are global and which are strictly local.

📚 Historical trend databases — schedule recurring runs and build your own time series of what the world searched for.

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❓ Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Is there an official Google Trends API?

No. Google does not publish a public Google Trends API for trending searches. This Actor is a reliable Google Trends API alternative — run it from the Console, the Apify API, Python, Node.js, or an MCP-connected AI agent.

How many trending searches can I get per run?

It depends on country and time window. A 4-hour window typically returns a short burst list; 24 hours commonly returns 100–300 terms per country, and 7 days can return 400+. Set maxItems: 0 to take everything available.

How fresh is the data?

It is the live Trending Now list — the same one Google shows on trends.google.com/trending at the moment your run executes. Schedule the Actor hourly for near-real-time monitoring.

Can I scrape several countries in one run?

Yes. Select as many countries as you like, or paste multiple Google Trends URLs. Countries are processed in parallel (maxConcurrency) and one failing country never stops the others.

Can I paste Google Trends URLs instead of picking countries?

Yes — startUrls accepts bulk input. Country, time window and category are read directly from each URL, so bookmarked links and dashboard exports work unchanged. You can mix URLs and picked countries in the same run.

Do I need a proxy?

No. The Actor starts with a direct connection and only escalates to a datacenter and then a residential proxy if Google pushes back — automatically, and reported in the log.

What is the difference between the news modes?

full fetches the articles behind every trend (richest data, slower). rss is a single fast pass that covers the top trends only. off skips news entirely and is the fastest, cheapest option.

Why do some rows have no related news?

Not every trending term has articles attached upstream — and in rss mode only the top trends are covered. Switch to full for the widest coverage.

How do I export the results?

From the Console Output tab choose Export → JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML or RSS. Via API: GET https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/{DATASET_ID}/items?format=csv.

Can I schedule recurring runs?

Yes — use the Apify Scheduler for hourly, daily, or weekly runs, and a webhook to push each finished run downstream.

Does the Actor return rows if a run is stopped early?

Yes. Every trending term is pushed the moment it is ready, so an aborted or timed-out run still leaves a usable partial dataset.

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🛠️ Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
No rows saved	Country code is not supported by Google Trends, or the category filter matched nothing	Try US first, clear categories, and widen timeframe
Fewer rows than expected	maxItems cap, or a narrow time window	Raise maxItems (or set 0) and use 48 / 168 hours
A country returned nothing	Google has no trending data for that market right now	Check the run log — other countries still complete normally
No news attached	newsMode: "rss" covers only top trends, or the trend has no articles	Switch to newsMode: "full" and raise newsLimit
Run is slow	newsMode: "full" with a high newsLimit, or many countries	Lower newsLimit, use rss / off, or reduce maxItems
Network fallback in the log	Google refused the direct route	Nothing to do — the Actor switched to a proxy automatically and kept going
Rows are large	Long related-term lists and many articles	Set includeRelatedTerms: false or lower newsLimit
Want more detail in the log	Default log level	Set debugLog: true

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💬 Help, support & custom builds

For custom solutions, private integrations, white-label trend pipelines, or implementation help:

📧 hello.dataminds@gmail.com

Useful Apify documentation:

• 📘 Apify documentation
• 🤖 Actors overview
• 🔌 Apify API reference
• 📚 Apify Academy — web scraping
• 🧰 Apify SDKs

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⚖️ Is web scraping legal?

This Actor collects only publicly available data from Google Trends. Use it responsibly and respect:

• ✅ website terms of service,
• ✅ rate limits and politeness norms,
• ✅ data-protection laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) in your jurisdiction,
• ✅ copyright and licensing of any content you republish.

You are responsible for compliant data collection, storage, and use. When in doubt, consult a qualified attorney.

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🔍 SEO keywords targeted

This README is intentionally keyword-rich for discovery on Google Search, Apify Store search, and Bing. Primary and secondary terms covered include:

Primary: google trends scraper · google trends api · trending searches scraper · trending now scraper · google trends trending searches · real-time trending keywords · google trends data extraction · trending topics api

Keyword & SEO: keyword research tool · trending keywords api · long-tail keyword scraper · search volume scraper · rising queries · related queries extraction · search demand data · seo trend monitoring · content ideas generator

Data & analytics: search trends dataset · trending topics dataset · google trends csv export · google trends json api · trend analytics pipeline · time series of search interest · market demand signals · category trend analysis

Use cases: newsjacking tool · breaking news monitoring · social media trend tracker · viral topic detector · e-commerce demand forecasting · competitor trend tracking · brand monitoring · daily trending report

Coverage: trending searches by country · google trends by region · worldwide trending searches · multi-country trend scraper · google trends bangladesh · google trends india · google trends uk · google trends usa

Integrations & AI: apify actor · make integration · n8n workflow · zapier automation · google sheets export · mcp server tool · ai agent data source · llm trend context · rag pipeline data

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Reference patterns for structure and section ordering:

• 📘 Apify Store — Google Trends Actors
• 📗 Apify publishing & monetization guidance
• 🔥 Google Trends — Trending Now