Long Tail Keyword Generator — Google, YouTube & Amazon Autocomplete Research

Give it one seed phrase, get back hundreds of real long-tail keywords and questions — pulled live from the same autocomplete indexes Google, YouTube and Amazon use in their own search boxes.

A live run on protein powder returned 1,084 unique keywords in 2.1 seconds: 315 of them questions, 836 of them four words or longer.

Nothing here is invented or LLM-generated. Every keyword is something a search engine volunteered because people actually type it.

How it works

Autocomplete only answers exactly what you ask, so this asks many slightly different things:

• Alphabet soup — appends a through z, so Google reveals its top completion for each letter
• Questions — prefixes how, what, why, when, where, who, can, does, is…
• Comparisons — appends vs, versus, alternative, better than…
• Prepositions — for, with, without, near, under…
• Commercial / intent — best, cheap, buy, price, review, near me…

Results are de-duplicated across every query and source. Keywords that surfaced from several queries are ranked first, because that repetition is itself a relevance signal.

Why not just pay for a keyword tool

AnswerThePublic and KeywordTool.io sell this for $89–$99 per month. This is the same mechanism, priced per keyword, with no subscription and an API you can call from a script or a schedule.

Input

{
  "keywords": ["protein powder", "home espresso"],
  "sources": ["google", "youtube", "amazon"],
  "modifierGroups": ["bare", "questions", "comparisons", "prepositions", "alphabet"],
  "language": "en",
  "country": "us",
  "questionsOnly": false,
  "minWordCount": 4
}

Sources: Google for general intent, YouTube for video topics, Amazon for buying intent. Using more than one also tells you which keywords appear on several platforms.

Localisation: language and country matter a lot — autocomplete is heavily localised. ko/kr, de/de, es/mx all return genuinely different keyword sets.

Every option

The same wording you see in the Apify console, with the JSON key for API and MCP callers.

Option	What it does	Default
Seed keywords — keywords (required)	One or more starting phrases. Each seed is expanded into hundreds of real long-tail variations.	—
Autocomplete sources — sources	Google for general search intent, YouTube for video topics, Amazon for buying intent. Using more than one also reveals which keywords appear on several platforms, which is a strong relevance signal.	["google"]
Expansion methods — modifierGroups	How the seed gets varied before asking autocomplete. Alphabet appends a-z (the classic trick that surfaces the top completion for each letter). Questions prefixes how/what/why/… Comparisons appends vs/alternative/…	["bare","questions","comparisons","prepositions","alphabet"]
Language — language	ISO-639-1 code, e.g. en, es, ko, de.	"en"
Country — country	ISO-3166 code, e.g. us, gb, kr. Autocomplete results are heavily localised.	"us"
Max keywords per seed — maxKeywordsPerSeed	Cap on delivered rows per seed. This is the main cost control.	1000
Questions only — questionsOnly	Keep only keywords phrased as questions — the fastest way to a content or FAQ plan. Filtered rows are not billed.	false
Minimum words — minWordCount	Drop short head terms. Set to 4 for true long-tail only.	0
Must contain any of — mustContain	Keep only keywords containing at least one of these substrings. Case-insensitive.	—
Concurrency — concurrency	Parallel autocomplete queries.	8
Proxy — proxyConfiguration	Leave the default. Autocomplete endpoints are generous but do rate-limit per IP on big alphabet-soup runs; the actor starts on cheap datacenter proxies and only escalates if actually blocked.	{"useApifyProxy":true}

Output

One row per unique keyword.

{
  "keyword": "protein powder vs creatine",
  "seed": "protein powder",
  "sources": ["google", "youtube"],
  "modifierGroups": ["comparisons", "alphabet"],
  "modifier": "vs",
  "seenCount": 6,
  "relevance": 601,
  "wordCount": 4,
  "characterCount": 26,
  "isQuestion": false,
  "isLongTail": true
}

Every field

You are billed per keyword delivered, so here is everything a row can contain.

Field	What it is
keyword	The suggestion itself, as the autocomplete index spelled it.
seed	Which of your seeds produced it.
sources	Every index it appeared in: google, youtube, amazon. Two sources agreeing is a stronger signal than one.
modifierGroups	Which query groups surfaced it: alphabet, questions, comparisons, commercial, prepositions.
modifier	The exact modifier on the query that found it first, e.g. "vs" or "b" — the group's specific member.
seenCount	How many separate queries surfaced this keyword. The best single ranking signal here.
relevance	Google's own suggestion relevance score, when it volunteers one. Absent for YouTube and Amazon.
wordCount	Words in the keyword.
characterCount	Characters in the keyword.
isQuestion	true when it starts with who/what/when/where/why/how and friends.
isLongTail	true at four words or more.

isQuestion and isLongTail are ready-made filters for content planning.

Who this is for

• SEO and content strategists — questionsOnly turns one seed into a blog or FAQ outline in a single run.
• Paid search managers — everything irrelevant that still autocompletes is a negative keyword you have not added yet.
• Amazon sellers — that source is pure buying intent, which the web index does not carry.
• YouTube creators — the youtube source reflects video search, not web search.

Common uses

• Content planning — questionsOnly: true gives you a blog or FAQ outline in one run.
• SEO keyword discovery — find the long-tail terms with real demand that competitors have not written for.
• YouTube titles and tags — use the youtube source; its index reflects video search, not web search.
• Amazon product research — the amazon source is pure buying intent.
• PPC negative keywords — everything irrelevant that still autocompletes is a negative to add.
• Localised research — run the same seed across countries and compare.

Pricing

Pay per keyword delivered. Keywords removed by your filters, and failed queries, cost nothing.

Starting a run costs $0.00001 — the platform's $0.00001 minimum, charged once per GB of memory, and these Actors run on 512 MB.

Other Actors in this family

Same engines, same billing, no account or API key on any of them.

YouTube & video

• YouTube Scraper — No API Key, Any URL or Search — Any YouTube URL or search term in, videos out — with subtitles, comments and sponsor deals as add-ons.
• Download YouTube Subtitles in Bulk — SRT, VTT & Text — Bulk subtitles from videos, channels or playlists — text, SRT, VTT or RAG chunks.
• Export YouTube Comments to CSV — Replies and Likes — Every comment and reply thread, with likes, authors and creator flags.
• List Every Video on a YouTube Channel — Export to CSV — A channel's whole back catalogue plus a subscriber and RSS summary row.
• Find YouTube Sponsors — Brand Deals, Codes & Links — Which brands pay which creators, with the campaign link, the code and the timestamp.
• YouTube Search API — Bulk Results, No Quota — Many search terms at once, every result as a row, filtered before you are billed.
• Track Deleted YouTube Videos & Title Changes — What a channel quietly changed: deleted videos, rewritten titles, view velocity.
• YouTube Creator Email Finder & Sponsor Lookup — A channel list into leads: the published email, audience bands, and who already sponsors them.
• Export a YouTube Playlist to CSV — Every Video — Any playlist as a table, with each video position in it.

Search demand

• Google Trends API — Today's Trending Searches, No Key — Today's trending searches by country, with traffic bands and the news behind them.

E-commerce

• Export Any Shopify Store's Products to CSV or JSON — Any Shopify catalogue: variants, SKUs, live prices, stock, images, collections.
• New Shopify Product Alerts — Competitor Drop Tracker — Only what a store launched since the last run. Scanning is free.
• Shopify Store Email Finder — Qualified B2B Leads — A domain list into qualified leads: contact email, size, price band, and whether the shop still trades.
• Website Tech Stack & Email Finder for B2B Lists — Any domain list into leads: contact email, what the site runs on, and the marketing tags it carries.

Hiring

• Greenhouse, Lever & Ashby Job Scraper — No API Key — Paste a company domain, get its open roles from Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever or SmartRecruiters.
• Ghost Job Detector — Track Reposts, Closures & Edits — What changed on a careers page: opened, closed, quietly reposted, or a ghost job.

Run it from code

Nothing here needs a login to the source, only your Apify token.

HTTP — start a run and wait for the rows:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/gganbukim~long-tail-keyword-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d @input.json

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('gganbukim/long-tail-keyword-scraper').call(input);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("gganbukim/long-tail-keyword-scraper").call(run_input=input)
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

Scheduled or event-driven — attach a schedule to run it on a cron, or a webhook to push each finished run into your own endpoint. It also connects through Apify's Zapier, Make, n8n and LangChain integrations, and is reachable from an MCP server if you are driving it from an agent.

Standby / API mode — the run above is synchronous: one call in, rows out, no polling. That is the shape to use if you are calling this per request rather than in a batch.

Errors, limits and what you are charged for

• You pay for delivered rows only. A row your filters removed, a page that failed, a retry — none of it is billed. Starting a run costs $0.00001: the platform minimum, charged once per gigabyte, and this Actor runs on 512 MB.
• A run that delivers nothing still costs the start fee and nothing else. If the input resolved to zero items, the run fails loudly with the reason rather than finishing green on an empty dataset.
• Blocking is handled by changing address, not by waiting. The Actor starts on cheap datacenter proxies and moves up only after a tier has actually been refused several times in a row, then drops back down once the cheap tier answers cleanly again. You are not paying for residential bandwidth that was never needed.
• Rate limits belong to the source, not to this Actor. Very large inputs are worked through in batches; the run reports how many items succeeded, were filtered, and failed, so a partial result is never presented as a complete one.
• Dataset retention follows your Apify plan. Export what you need, or push it out with a webhook, if you want it past that window.

Is this legal?

This Actor reads pages and public endpoints that anyone can open in a browser without an account. It does not log in, does not defeat a paywall, and does not touch anything behind authentication.

Scraping public data is broadly lawful in the US and the EU, and courts have repeatedly said so — but "public" is not the same as "unrestricted", and what you may then do with the data is a separate question from whether you may collect it. Personal data pulls in the GDPR and similar regimes whatever the source, so if your rows contain people, you need a lawful basis for keeping them.

Apify publishes a fuller treatment in Is web scraping legal? and an ethical scraping guide. None of this is legal advice; if the use is commercial and the data is personal, ask someone qualified.

Something wrong, or missing?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — it goes straight to the developer and is the fastest route. Include the run ID; it carries the input and the log, which is usually enough to reproduce the problem without another round trip.

Sources change without warning, and a field that quietly goes null is worth reporting even if the run succeeded. A broken parser looks exactly like a quiet day in the data until someone says so.

FAQ

Will I get blocked or rate-limited? These are the same autocomplete endpoints the search box calls as you type — built to answer fast and often, not defended against reading. The Actor runs on cheap datacenter proxies and only escalates if it is actually blocked, and there is no account involved at any point.

Does this give search volume? No. It gives real keywords plus corroboration and Google's relevance ordering. Volume needs a paid data provider; this is the discovery half, and it is the half that gets you the long tail.

Are the keywords real? Yes — they come from live autocomplete indexes, not a language model.

Does it need an API key? No.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes, via Apify Schedules, webhooks, or the API. Also available over MCP for AI agents.

Is it legal to scrape autocomplete suggestions? These are the same public suggestion endpoints your browser calls as you type, with no login and nothing bypassed. What comes back is a list of query strings — facts about what people search, not anyone's copyrighted work. Each provider's Terms of Service are a separate contract question. Not legal advice.

How much does 1,000 keywords cost? $0.50, plus $0.00002 for the run. Keywords your filters remove and queries that fail are never billed.

Can I export the results to Excel or Google Sheets? Yes. Every run's dataset downloads as CSV, Excel, JSON, XML or RSS from the Storage tab, or straight from the API if you want a live link a spreadsheet can pull.

Can I connect it to Zapier, Make or n8n? Yes — Apify publishes integrations for all three, plus webhooks that fire when a run finishes. A common setup is a schedule here and a webhook into your own database or Slack.

Do I need to write code? No. Fill the form in the console and press Start. If you do want code, the Apify client libraries for Python and JavaScript call this the same way, and it is available over MCP so an AI agent can call it directly.