Google Ads Transparency Scraper

Overview

This Apify Actor quickly checks a list of website domains to determine whether they have ever run Google Ads — either currently active or at any point in the past.

It uses publicly available data from the official Google Ads Transparency Center
→ https://adstransparency.google.com/

Primary use cases

• Competitor advertising intelligence
• Lead generation for digital marketing agencies
• Market & trend analysis
• High-volume domain screening (100,000+ domains possible)

Performance

• Reliable batches of up to 1,000 domains per run
• Scales easily to very large lists via multiple executions
• Built with Playwright for stable browser automation
• Residential proxy support included (strongly recommended for >200 domains)

Key Features

• Batch processing of 1,000 domains per run
• Clear yes/no result + optional metadata per domain
• Structured output (JSON, CSV, Excel compatible)
• Automatic retries and error handling
• Optional Apify residential proxies for high success rate
• Compliant with public data access guidelines

How to Run the Actor

1. Go to your Apify Console → find or open this Actor
2. Click Try for free or Run
3. Switch to the Input tab
4. Paste your JSON configuration (see examples below)
5. Click Start
6. Monitor progress in the run log
7. When finished → go to Storage → Dataset → download results

Input Configuration

Provide input as a JSON object or paste a list of domains.

Minimal working example

{
    "domains": [
        "Jewishcolumbus.Org",
        "Josephscoatcolumbus.Com",
        "Kars4kids.Org",
        "Columbusfoundation.Org",
        "Marchofdimes.Org"
    ]
}

adsPageLoadDelay Tuning Guide

If ad details such as last run date or format are missing from the output, the results page may not have finished rendering before the scraper read it. Increase this value until data is consistently extracted.

Connection Speed	Recommended Value
Fast (Less Costly)	1000 – 1500 ms
Slow (Stable)	2000 – 4000 ms
Very Slow (Higher Cost)	5000 – 10000 ms

Domain Input Notes

• Domains are case-insensitive — Kars4kids.Org and kars4kids.org are treated identically.
• Leading www. is stripped before matching, so www.example.com and example.com resolve to the same entry.
• Duplicate domains in the list are processed individually and will produce duplicate rows in the output. Deduplicate your input list beforehand if needed.
• If Google's autocomplete returns no suggestions for a domain, or no suggestion exactly matches the input domain, the domain is recorded as ads_ever: "No" and processing moves on.

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Output

Results are saved to the default Apify Dataset, one record per domain. The dataset can be exported as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML from the Apify Console.

Example Output

[
  {
    "domain": "Lacountylibrary.Org",
    "ads_ever": "Yes",
    "date_of_last_running": "Oct 4, 2025",
    "type_of_ad": "Image",
    "ads_link": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR04944773754573029377/creative/CR15447046675465502721?authuser=0&region=anywhere"
  },
  {
    "domain": "Nami.org",
    "ads_ever": "Yes",
    "date_of_last_running": "Apr 24, 2026",
    "type_of_ad": "Text",
    "ads_link": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR03599607555292135425/creative/CR08688202327040983041?authuser=0&region=anywhere"
  }
]