🔥 Weibo Hot Search Scraper | 微博热搜 & Chinese Trending Topics API

Scrape Weibo (微博) trending hot search topics in real-time. Get the top 50 微博热搜榜 (Weibo hot search ranking) with trending keywords, engagement counts, labels (新/热/沸/爆), categories, and direct search URLs. The most reliable weibo scraper for chinese social media trends and china market research — no login required.

Features

• 🔥 Real-time trending topics — fetch the current Weibo hot search list (微博热搜榜) on every run
• 📊 Rich metadata per topic — engagement counts (num), labels (新/热/沸/爆), categories (综艺/体育/财经…), ranking position, and topic flags
• 🔗 Direct search URLs — each topic includes a clickable s.weibo.com search URL
• 🏷️ Promoted topics included — government/promoted topics (hotgovs) are captured separately with isPromoted: true
• 🚫 No login required — uses the public ajax/side/hotSearch endpoint
• ⚡ Fast & lightweight — single API call, no browser, no pagination needed
• 🌐 Proxy support — optional Apify proxy configuration for access from outside China
• 📱 Structured JSON output — clean, ready for dashboards, ML pipelines, or databases

Use Cases

• Social media monitoring — track what's trending on China's largest microblogging platform
• Chinese market research — understand real-time public discourse and trending topics in China
• News aggregation — supplement news feeds with Weibo trending stories
• Sentiment analysis pipelines — feed trending keywords into downstream sentiment analysis
• Brand monitoring — check if your brand or product appears in Weibo hot search
• Content discovery — find viral topics for content creation or curation
• Academic research — study Chinese social media trends and public opinion dynamics
• Competitive intelligence — monitor trending topics in your industry on Chinese social media
• SEO & marketing — discover trending keywords for Chinese market campaigns
• Crisis detection — catch negative trending topics about your brand early

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
proxyConfiguration	object	No	{ useApifyProxy: true }	Apify proxy configuration. Use residential proxies if scraping from outside China. The public API works without proxy from most locations.

Output Fields

Each dataset item represents one hot search topic with the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
rank	integer	Ranking position on the hot search list (0-based for realtime, appended for promoted)
realpos	integer|null	Real position as reported by Weibo (may differ from rank for promoted topics)
word	string	Topic text / search keyword
wordScheme	string	Hashtag-formatted topic (e.g. #话题#)
note	string	Topic description or note text
num	integer	Engagement count (search/discussion volume)
label	string	Label tag (新=New, 热=Hot, 沸=Boiling, 爆=Explosive, etc.)
iconDesc	string	Icon description text
iconDescColor	string	Icon color (hex, e.g. #ff3852)
category	string	Topic category (综艺/体育/财经/社会/etc.)
flag	integer	Weibo internal flag (1=hot, 2=new, etc.)
topicFlag	integer	Weibo topic flag
url	string	Direct Weibo search URL for this topic
isPromoted	boolean	true if this is a promoted/government topic, false for organic hot search
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of when the data was scraped

How It Works

1. Single API call — The actor calls Weibo's public ajax/side/hotSearch endpoint
2. Parse response — Extracts organic hot search (data.realtime) and promoted topics (data.hotgovs)
3. Structure & enrich — Each topic is enriched with rank position, category, label, and direct search URL
4. JSON output — Results saved to Apify dataset, ready for consumption

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing:

Event	Price	Description
actor-start	$0.005	Charged once when the Actor starts
topic-scraped	$0.002	Charged per hot search topic scraped

Typical cost: A single run with ~50 trending topics costs approximately $0.005 + (50 × $0.002) = $0.105.

Technical Details

• API endpoint: https://weibo.com/ajax/side/hotSearch (Weibo's public AJAX hot search endpoint)
• No authentication: The API works without login cookies or tokens
• Headers required: User-Agent (Chrome desktop), Referer: https://weibo.com/, Accept: application/json
• Response format: JSON with data.realtime (organic hot search) and data.hotgovs (promoted topics)
• Runtime: Node.js 20 on Apify platform
• SDK: Apify SDK v3 + Crawlee v3
• Execution time: Typically < 5 seconds per run

Why Use This vs Alternatives?

Feature	This Actor	Weibo Scraper (posts)	Weibo Hot Search Tracker	Chinese Brand Monitor
Hot search ranking (微博热搜)	✅	❌	✅	❌
50 trending topics per run	✅	❌	✅	❌
Heat values & labels	✅	❌	✅	❌
Category classification	✅	❌	❌	✅
Promoted topic detection	✅	❌	❌	❌
No login required	✅	❌	✅	✅
Post/comment scraping	❌	✅	❌	✅
Cross-platform	❌	❌	❌	✅
Single API call (fast)	✅	❌	✅	❌

FAQ

Keywords

weibo hot search · 微博热搜 · weibo trending · 微博热搜榜 · sina weibo scraper · chinese social media trends · weibo api · weibo data extraction · weibo scraper · sina weibo hot search · weibo trends api · weibo trending topics · 微博趋势 · chinese trending topics · weibo hot search api · china market research · weibo monitoring · chinese social listening · weibo public opinion · 微博舆情 · weibo rank tracker · weibo heat value · china social media monitoring · weibo real-time trends · 微博实时热搜