Google News Scraper Actor

Collect real-time Google News Search, Top Stories, and Topic feeds with localized filtering, infinite scroll coverage, and optional redirect unwrapping for clean publisher URLs.

Why teams pick this actor

• Rank-ready coverage – Mirrors the long-form, marketing-first READMEs of top marketplace actors while focusing on actionable data (headlines, snippets, publishers, timestamps, thumbnails, canonical URLs).
• 3 capture modes – SEARCH for keyword monitoring, TOP_STORIES for country/region dashboards, TOPIC (incl. hashed topic IDs) for the curated Google News sections journalists rely on.
• Localization first – Every run requires an explicit language like en-US or de-DE, so you can mirror the behavior of your target newsroom or SEO locale.
• Stateful infinite scroll – Playwright + Chrome scrolls until maxItems, deduplicates via persistent state, and survives platform migrations without repeating articles.
• Redirect intelligence – Toggle resolveRedirects to unwrap news.google.com links via HTTP first, then fall back to a headless browser for stubborn publishers.
• Operator friendly – Resource throttling (blocked assets, batching, optional proxy pools) keeps compute predictable, so you can undercut $20/month competitors while still monetizing premium options.

Perfect for

• Trend and sentiment tracking dashboards
• Competitive/brand monitoring in multiple languages
• Feeding LLM/RAG pipelines with fresh, normalized news snippets
• SEO teams mapping content velocity or backlink opportunities
• Research teams exporting CSV/JSON data into BI tools

Data you get

Field	Description
title	Headline as displayed on Google News
source	Publisher name extracted from the card
publishedAt	ISO timestamp normalized from relative strings (e.g., “3 hours ago”)
originalUrl	Google News redirect URL (always present)
finalUrl	Set when resolveRedirects=true; points at the publisher site
thumbnailUrl	Image from the article card, when available
snippet	Reserved for future excerpt support

Modes & localization cheatsheet

Mode	When to use	URL that gets crawled
SEARCH	Keyword monitoring, advanced query operators	https://news.google.com/search?q={query}
TOP_STORIES	Country-level front page	https://news.google.com/topstories
TOPIC	Curated sections & hashed topics	Either https://news.google.com/topics/{topicId} or a fallback search

Topic IDs & sections

1. Open the desired topic/section on news.google.com.
2. Copy the hashed ID from the URL (e.g., CAAqJggKIiBDQkFTRWdvSUwyMHZNRGRqTVhZU0FtVnVHZ0pWVXlnQVAB).
3. Pass it in query when mode="TOPIC" to lock the crawler to that curated feed.

Input parameters

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
mode	`'SEARCH'	'TOP_STORIES'	'TOPIC'`	No
query	string	SEARCH / custom TOPIC	–	Keywords or hashed topic IDs
language	ll-CC	Yes	en-US	Drives hl, gl, and ceid params; always set it (best practice from Apify leaderboard actors)
resolveRedirects	boolean	No	false	Adds an HTTP + optional browser hop per article to unwrap publisher URLs
maxItems	number	No	100	Hard stop for infinite scroll + dataset pushes
proxyConfiguration	object	No	Apify auto	Pass your proxy group or custom proxy URL

Advanced search operators

• Exact match: "artificial intelligence"
• Source filter: site:reuters.com "earnings"
• Title only: intitle:"climate"
• Exclusions: tesla -stock
• Date bounds: after:2024-01-01 before:2024-06-30

Combine operators to reproduce the saved searches marketing teams monitor daily.

Quick start

1. Add the actor from the Apify Store and click “Try for free”.
2. Choose the mode (SEARCH, TOP_STORIES, TOPIC) and fill in language (e.g., en-GB).
3. Paste your keywords or topic IDs; bump maxItems if you need deeper coverage.
4. Optional: enable resolveRedirects for canonical publisher URLs.
5. Run & download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or stream it via the Apify API.

Output example

{
  "title": "OpenAI ships GPT-Next",
  "source": "TechCrunch",
  "publishedAt": "2025-11-25T14:30:00.000Z",
  "originalUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiYmh0dHBzOi8vbmV3cy5nb29nbGUuY29tLy4uLg",
  "finalUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/25/openai-gpt-next",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/..."
}

Dataset schema

Field	Type	Example	Notes
title	string	"Tesla unveils new Model"	Headline pulled from the card
source	string	"Reuters"	Publisher label
publishedAt	string (ISO-8601)	"2025-11-25T14:30:00.000Z"	Normalized by parseGoogleDate
originalUrl	string	"https://news.google.com/..."	Always present, Google redirect
finalUrl	string	"https://www.reuters.com/..."	Only populated when resolveRedirects=true or when Google already links directly
thumbnailUrl	string	"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/..."	Optional image URL
snippet	string	null	Reserved for future excerpt extraction

Every dataset item is stored in the default Apify Dataset, so you can download JSON/CSV/Excel or stream via the Dataset API.

Cost & performance tips

• Redirect resolution is the main price lever. Keep it off for cheaper monitoring runs and upsell it as a premium add-on when clients need canonical URLs.
• Because the crawler blocks images/fonts and reuses sessions, SEARCH mode can pull ~100 results on the default memory tier. Increase the run memory only when maxItems is very high.
• Persistent state (STATE key-value store) prevents duplicates if the run migrates, so re-runs won’t waste your monthly budget.

Need help?

Open an issue in the Apify actor console or ping us with your run ID. We actively benchmark against the highest-ranking Google News actors (e.g., api-empire/google-news-scraper at $19.99/month) to keep this README—and the crawler—competitive.