Influencer Marketing Intelligence - Find Micro-Influencers by Niche

Find micro-influencers in any niche in minutes, not days.

Why This Actor Exists

Discovering the right micro-influencers for your brand is one of the most time-consuming tasks in modern marketing. Agency teams routinely spend 10-20 hours manually searching through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, scrolling through profiles, copying handles into spreadsheets, and guessing at follower counts. Influencer marketing platforms charge $200-500/month for access to their databases, and even then, you are limited to whichever creators have opted in.

This actor flips the process. Instead of waiting for influencers to list themselves in a marketplace, it actively discovers them by mining Google search results for publicly available social media profiles matching your exact niche, follower range, and location criteria. The result: a clean, structured dataset of influencer profiles delivered directly to your Apify dataset in minutes rather than days.

An agency charges $500-2,000 to manually find and vet 50 influencers. This actor does it for under $1.

How It Works - The Discovery Pipeline

Niche Input         Google Search        Profile Discovery      Data Extraction        Enrichment           Output
 +-----------+      +---------------+      +----------------+     +----------------+    +--------------+    +----------+
 | "fitness" | ---> | site:tiktok   | ---> | @fitcoach_jane | --> | Bio, Followers | -> | Email, Tags  | -> | Dataset  |
 | "cooking" |      | site:instagram|      | @chef_mike_nyc |     | Display Name   |    | Content Type |    | JSON/CSV |
 | "tech"    |      | site:youtube  |      | @techwithsara  |     | Profile URL    |    | Niche Match  |    | API      |
 +-----------+      +---------------+      +----------------+     +----------------+    +--------------+    +----------+

Step 1 - Smart Query Generation: Based on your niche, target platforms, and follower range, the actor generates targeted Google search queries using site-specific operators. For example: site:tiktok.com/@* "fitness" "10K" OR "50K" followers.

Step 2 - Search Result Scraping: Google results are parsed carefully to extract social media profile URLs and their associated snippets. The actor handles pagination and rate-limits itself with randomized delays to stay under the radar.

Step 3 - Profile Enrichment: Each discovered profile URL is visited to extract additional data from meta tags (og:title, og:description), page titles, and visible bio text. If a platform blocks the page, the actor gracefully falls back to the data already captured from the Google snippet.

Step 4 - Deduplication and Scoring: Profiles are deduplicated by username and platform, then sorted by relevance or estimated engagement based on your preference.

Feature Highlights

• Multi-platform discovery across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube simultaneously
• Follower range targeting from nano (1K-10K) through macro (500K+) tiers
• Location filtering to find influencers in specific cities, countries, or regions
• Contact extraction pulls email addresses from bios and profile descriptions
• Niche tagging automatically categorizes influencers based on bio keyword analysis
• Anti-detection measures with random user agents, request delays, and CAPTCHA detection
• Graceful degradation if a profile page blocks scraping, snippet data is still output
• Deduplication ensures no duplicate profiles in your final dataset

What Data It Extracts

Each influencer profile in the output contains:

Field	Description
platform	Social platform: tiktok, instagram, or youtube
username	The handle/username (without @)
displayName	Full display name from the profile
bio	Bio text or description from the profile
estimatedFollowers	Parsed follower/subscriber count as a number
nicheTags	Array of niche keywords detected in the bio
contactEmails	Email addresses found in bio (if enabled)
profileUrl	Direct link to the profile page
contentType	Primary content type: video, photo, or mixed
dataSource	Whether data came from Google snippet or enriched profile
discoveredAt	ISO timestamp of when the profile was found

5 Use Cases

1. D2C Brands - Find micro-influencers who genuinely talk about your product category. A skincare brand can discover 50 beauty creators with 10K-100K followers in minutes, then reach out with product seeding offers.

2. Marketing Agencies - Build influencer shortlists for client campaigns at scale. Run the actor across multiple niches and follower tiers to create a segmented database for pitching.

3. Affiliate Programs - Discover creators who are already talking about your niche. These warm leads are far more likely to join your affiliate program than cold outreach to random accounts.

4. PR and Comms Teams - Identify relevant voices for product launches, events, or press coverage. Filter by location to find local influencers for market-specific campaigns.

5. Competitor Analysis - Search for influencers in your competitor's niche to understand who is promoting similar products and identify partnership opportunities they may have missed.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
niche	string	(required)	The niche or topic to search. Examples: "fitness", "cooking", "tech reviews", "beauty"
platforms	array	["tiktok", "instagram", "youtube"]	Which platforms to discover influencers on
followerRange	enum	"micro_10k_100k"	Target tier: nano_1k_10k, micro_10k_100k, mid_100k_500k, macro_500k_plus
maxResults	integer	50	Maximum number of influencer profiles to return (1-500)
location	string	(optional)	Filter by geography: "USA", "UK", "Los Angeles", etc.
language	string	"en"	Language code for search queries
includeContactInfo	boolean	true	Extract email addresses from bios
sortBy	enum	"relevance"	Sort output by "relevance" or "engagement"
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Browser concurrency (keep 1-3 for best results)

Output Example

{
    "platform": "tiktok",
    "username": "fitcoachjane",
    "displayName": "Jane Miller | Fitness Coach",
    "bio": "NASM Certified PT | Helping busy moms get strong | DM for coaching | jane@fitcoachjane.com",
    "estimatedFollowers": 47000,
    "nicheTags": ["fitness", "gym", "workout", "health", "wellness"],
    "contactEmails": ["jane@fitcoachjane.com"],
    "profileUrl": "https://www.tiktok.com/@fitcoachjane",
    "contentType": "video",
    "dataSource": "profile_enriched",
    "discoveredAt": "2026-03-08T14:23:01.000Z"
}

Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-event (PPE) pricing model:

Event	Cost
Actor start	$0.005
Per profile discovered	$0.006

Example: Finding 50 influencers costs approximately $0.005 + (50 x $0.006) = $0.305. That is roughly $6 per 1,000 profiles - Tier 2 pricing for enriched data with contact info extraction.

Compare that to manual research (10+ hours of work at $25/hr = $250) or influencer platform subscriptions ($200-500/month). This actor pays for itself on the first run.

FAQ

Q: Does this scrape private account data? A: No. This actor only discovers and extracts publicly available information - profile names, bios, and follower counts that anyone can see by visiting the profile. No login is required.

Q: Why does it search Google instead of scraping platforms directly? A: Social media platforms have aggressive anti-bot measures. Google indexes public profile pages and serves them reliably, making it the most consistent data source for profile discovery. The actor then visits individual profile pages for enrichment but gracefully handles blocks.

Q: What if Google shows a CAPTCHA? A: The actor detects CAPTCHAs and logs a warning. It will skip the blocked query and continue with remaining searches. Lowering maxConcurrency to 1 and keeping maxResults reasonable (under 100) reduces the chance of triggering CAPTCHAs.

Q: Are the follower counts accurate? A: Follower counts are estimates parsed from Google snippets and profile page text. They may be slightly outdated (Google re-indexes pages periodically). For exact counts, use the profile URLs in the output to verify manually or with a dedicated API.

Q: Can I search for influencers in non-English markets? A: Yes. Set the language parameter to your target language code (e.g., "es" for Spanish, "pt" for Portuguese) and use niche keywords in that language. Adding a location filter improves results further.

Q: How many results can I realistically get per run? A: Typically 20-80 unique profiles per run depending on the niche popularity and number of platforms searched. Very specific niches (e.g., "underwater basket weaving") will yield fewer results than broad ones (e.g., "fitness").

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