Google Events Scraper

What this Actor does

This Actor collects public event listings from Google’s Events search vertical, including concerts, conferences, festivals, meetups, and classes. It normalizes visible event-card fields, removes common Google redirect/tracking parameters, deduplicates listings, and follows bounded pagination.

An explicit “can’t find events” page is a valid empty result. Challenges, exhausted requests, and unknown markup fail closed rather than being published as an empty success.

Features

• Event name, date, time, category, location, venue, description, link, source, image, query, page, and scrape timestamp.
• Google country/language localization and Apify/custom proxy support.
• Bounded retries, request timeout, and optional request delay.
• Stable URL normalization and URL/field-based de-duplication.
• Dataset whitelist and run summary in OUTPUT.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	tech conferences	Event search term, up to 150 characters.
location	string	New York	City, region, or country, up to 120 characters.
maxItems	integer	50	Maximum unique events, from 1 to 500.
gl	string	us	Two- or three-letter Google country code.
hl	string	en	Google interface language code.
proxyConfiguration	object	Google SERP proxy	Standard Apify proxy settings.
maxRequestRetries	integer	2	Request retries, from 0 to 3.
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	60	Page timeout, from 15 to 120 seconds.
requestDelayMs	integer	0	Optional delay before each page, from 0 to 5,000 milliseconds.

Example

{
  "query": "music festivals",
  "location": "London",
  "maxItems": 20,
  "gl": "gb",
  "hl": "en",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["GOOGLE_SERP"]
  }
}

For a local direct attempt, use proxyConfiguration: { "useApifyProxy": false }.

Output

{
  "position": 1,
  "eventName": "London Tech Summit",
  "date": "Sat, Jun 14",
  "time": "9:00 AM",
  "location": "London",
  "venue": "ExCeL London",
  "link": "https://example.org/events/london-tech-summit",
  "eventDescription": "A technology conference with talks and workshops.",
  "source": "example.org",
  "query": "tech conferences",
  "searchLocation": "London",
  "page": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

The OUTPUT key-value record reports success, found, item count, handled pages, failed pages, query/location, and elapsed time. The Actor never emits placeholder event rows.

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Limitations and responsible use

Google controls event inventory, ranking, localization, markup, and availability. Events can change or disappear between runs. The Actor does not solve CAPTCHAs, spoof browser fingerprints, or bypass access controls. It uses bounded public requests and fails closed on challenge pages.

Local development

npm install
npm test
npm run lint
npm run validate
npx --no-install apify validate-schema
npx --no-install apify run --purge --input-file ./qa-inputs/local-direct.json