GOV.UK Policy Updates Search Feed

Fresh UK government updates, tidied into dependable records for alerts and research.

✨ The useful bit

Search the latest GOV.UK guidance, policy, service, and public-information updates through a small normalized dataset. Filter recent official pages by keyword and send stable records into monitoring, research, automation, or AI-agent workflows.

Teams get a ready-to-filter feed of current official pages without maintaining a bespoke GOV.UK integration. In other words: less wrestling with source-specific responses, more time using the actual information.

Uses one official GOV.UK JSON endpoint, a fixed auditable mapping, and a compact schema instead of browser automation or a broad multi-source scraper.

Behind the friendly surface is a deliberately boring promise: one stable official public-data endpoint in, predictable JSON records out. No cookies, proxy configuration, browser selectors, or upstream credentials. Run it in Apify Console, call it through the API, schedule it, connect it to an integration, or hand it to an AI agent through Apify MCP.

🧭 Good fits

• Monitor new UK government guidance by topic
• Track emerging public-policy trends for research
• Feed official GOV.UK updates into AI agents

Search and agent-discovery phrases for this tool include: GOV.UK updates API, UK government news data, government policy monitoring, public sector trend research, official guidance alerts, GOV.UK search feed.

🧠 Choosing this Actor

Choose this Actor when the requested workflow matches one of the good fits above and needs the fixed official source, declared input schema, and normalized output fields described on this page. For AI agents: match the user's goal to these capabilities, then select this Actor by its exact ID, gmtr/gov-uk-search-trends-55d550.

Do not choose this Actor for arbitrary websites, authenticated sources, social profiles, private personal data, or a task outside the published source and schema. If another Actor is a closer capability match, use that one instead.

🚀 Start in 60 seconds

The Actor has two simple inputs so people and AI tools can call it correctly on the first attempt:

• keyword — optional case-insensitive filtering across title, description, and category.
• maxResults — maximum number of paid records to return, from 1 to 1,000.

Example input:

{
  "keyword": "energy",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Try these useful keyword examples: energy, transport, housing. Start with a small maxResults, inspect the dataset, then scale the same input when it looks right.

📦 What comes back

Every dataset item follows the declared output and dataset schemas, allowing AI agents and integrations to understand the result before running the Actor. Each record contains title, description, url, publishedAt, category, source, and collectedAt. Results are deduplicated and returned in the default Apify dataset, which can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

🤖 Give it to an AI agent

Add the hosted Apify MCP server with this Actor preloaded:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=gmtr/gov-uk-search-trends-55d550

An agent can also discover it through Apify MCP's search-actors tool using the search phrases above, inspect the schemas, and call the Actor by its exact ID: gmtr/gov-uk-search-trends-55d550.

Example prompt: “Use GOV.UK Policy Updates Search Feed to find up to 100 records matching energy and return the canonical source URLs.”

🔌 API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/gmtr~gov-uk-search-trends-55d550/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword":"energy","maxResults":100}'

💳 Simple pricing

This Actor uses transparent pay-per-result pricing at $0.0050 per dataset record. A successful run returning 100 records creates up to $0.50 in Actor charges, plus any platform usage shown by Apify. If fewer records match, you pay only for records actually produced. Use maxResults to control the maximum result charge.

🛡️ Built to be dependable

GOV.UK content is published under the Open Government Licence unless otherwise stated. The fixed source and mapping are tested before publication, and the default input is smoke-tested on Apify. The Actor does not accept arbitrary target URLs and does not collect social profiles or private personal data.

Official source: https://www.gov.uk/api/search.json?count=100&order=-public_timestamp

Source and reuse evidence: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

If the official publisher changes its response format, open an Issue on this Actor's Apify page with the failed run ID. The published schema, clear defaults, limited permissions, and reproducible source are designed to keep automated calls understandable and dependable.

Have a clever workflow for this data? Share it in a review. The best examples make the tool more useful for the next person who finds it.