Google News Scraper & Brand Monitor

Real-time media monitoring and competitive intelligence powered by Google News. Track any keyword, brand name, or topic across thousands of news sources worldwide.

How It Works

GOOGLE NEWS BRAND MONITOR
                    ========================

  +-------------------+      +---------------------+
  |   Your Keywords   | ---> |   Google News RSS    |  <-- Approach 1 (Primary)
  |                   |      |   Feed Parser        |
  |  "Tesla"          |      +---------------------+
  |  "OpenAI"         |              |
  |  "Your Brand"     |         (fallback)
  +-------------------+              v
                             +---------------------+
                             |  Google News Web     |  <-- Approach 2
                             |  Puppeteer Scraper   |
                             +---------------------+
                                     |
                                (fallback)
                                     v
                             +---------------------+
                             |  Google Search       |  <-- Approach 3
                             |  News Tab Scraper    |
                             +---------------------+
                                     |
                                     v
                             +---------------------+
                             |  Article Dataset     |
                             |  title, source,      |
                             |  date, snippet, URL  |
                             +---------------------+
                                     |
                            (if extractFullText=true)
                                     v
                             +---------------------+
                             |  Full Text Extractor |
                             |  Visits each article |
                             |  page for full body  |
                             +---------------------+

What It Does

This actor searches Google News for articles matching your keywords or brand names and returns structured data including title, source, publication date, snippet, URL, and optionally the full article text.

It uses a triple-fallback approach to maximize reliability:

1. Google News RSS feeds -- fast, structured, most reliable
2. Google News website -- JavaScript-rendered, catches what RSS misses
3. Google Search News tab -- broadest coverage, last resort

The actor handles Google consent screens, rotates user agents, adds random delays between requests, and gracefully handles CAPTCHAs by skipping and logging warnings.

Use Cases

• PR & Communications Teams: Monitor brand mentions across global news sources in real time. Track coverage of press releases, product launches, and company announcements.
• Sales & Business Development: Track prospect companies and industries. Get alerts when target accounts appear in the news for timely outreach.
• Investors & Analysts: Monitor portfolio companies, market sectors, and economic indicators. Stay ahead of market-moving news.
• Researchers & Academics: Collect news datasets for media analysis, sentiment research, or tracking public discourse on specific topics.
• Competitive Intelligence: Track competitor mentions, product launches, partnerships, and executive changes across news media.
• Crisis Management: Detect negative coverage early. Monitor developing stories that could impact your organization.

Input Example

{
    "keywords": ["Tesla", "OpenAI", "Anthropic"],
    "timeRange": "past_day",
    "maxArticlesPerKeyword": 20,
    "extractFullText": false,
    "language": "en",
    "country": "US",
    "maxConcurrency": 3
}

Output Example

Each article is stored as a separate record in the dataset:

{
    "keyword": "Tesla",
    "title": "Tesla Announces New Battery Technology Breakthrough",
    "source": "Reuters",
    "publishedAt": "2026-03-09T10:30:00.000Z",
    "snippet": "Tesla unveiled a breakthrough battery technology that could double the range of electric vehicles while cutting costs by 40%...",
    "articleUrl": "https://reuters.com/business/autos/tesla-battery-2026-03-09",
    "imageUrl": "https://images.reuters.com/tesla-battery.jpg",
    "fullText": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-03-09T12:15:30.000Z"
}

When extractFullText is enabled, the fullText field contains the full article body text (up to 10,000 characters).

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
keywords	string[]	required	Keywords or brand names to search
timeRange	string	past_day	Time filter: anytime, past_hour, past_day, past_week, past_month
maxArticlesPerKeyword	integer	20	Maximum articles to return per keyword
extractFullText	boolean	false	Visit each article to extract full text (slower)
language	string	en	Language code (en, es, fr, de, ja, etc.)
country	string	US	Country code (US, GB, DE, FR, JP, etc.)
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Max concurrent browser pages
proxyConfiguration	object	none	Proxy settings (recommended for reliability)

Pricing

This actor uses Pay Per Event (PPE) pricing:

Event	Price	Description
article-found	$0.005	Charged for each article successfully scraped

Example costs:

• 20 articles for 1 keyword = ~$0.10
• 20 articles for 5 keywords = ~$0.50
• 100 articles for 10 keywords = ~$5.00

Free tier includes a limited number of events per month. Full text extraction does not incur additional charges beyond the per-article fee.

Tips for Best Results

• Use Apify Proxy for best reliability, especially residential proxies for heavy usage.
• Start with RSS (the default approach) -- it is the fastest and most reliable method.
• Keep maxArticlesPerKeyword reasonable (10-30) to avoid triggering rate limits.
• Use specific keywords -- "Tesla Model Y recall" works better than just "Tesla".
• Time range matters -- "past_day" returns the freshest results with fewer duplicates.
• Full text extraction is slower and may not work on all sites (paywalls, dynamic pages).

FAQ

Q: Why am I getting fewer articles than expected? A: Google News availability varies by keyword, time range, and region. Some niche keywords may have limited coverage. Try broadening the time range or using more general terms.

Q: Does it work with non-English languages? A: Yes. Set the language and country parameters to match your target region. For example, language: "de" and country: "DE" for German news.

Q: Can it bypass paywalled articles? A: The actor extracts whatever text is publicly visible on the article page. It does not bypass paywalls or login walls.

Q: How often should I run this for monitoring? A: For real-time brand monitoring, schedule it hourly or every few hours with timeRange: "past_hour". For daily digests, run it once per day with timeRange: "past_day".

Q: What if I get CAPTCHAs? A: The actor detects CAPTCHAs and gracefully skips to the next approach. Using Apify residential proxies significantly reduces CAPTCHA rates.

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