YouTube Niche Scout

Analyze YouTube search results to discover profitable content niches. For each keyword, the actor fetches the top videos, scores them by demand vs. competition, and returns enriched data you can use to make data-driven decisions about what content to create.

Features

• Niche opportunity score — balances average view count against the number of competing videos. A high score means high demand with low supply.
• Engagement rate — (likeCount + commentCount) / viewCount per video.
• Views per subscriber — measures how well a video outperforms its channel audience.
• YouTube Data API v3 support — accurate view counts, subscriber counts, like/comment data for up to 200 results per run.
• yt-dlp fallback — works without an API key (up to 50 results, limited metadata).
• Multi-language support — bias results toward EN, JA, ES, FR, DE, PT, KO, or ZH.
• Date filtering — restrict results to videos published after a given date.
• Sort options — by relevance, view count, or upload date.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
keyword	string	Yes	—	Topic to analyze (e.g. home workout beginners)
youtubeApiKey	string	No	—	Google Cloud API key (YouTube Data API v3). Omit to use yt-dlp.
maxResults	integer	No	50	Videos to analyze (max 200 with API, 50 with yt-dlp)
publishedAfter	string	No	—	ISO date filter, e.g. 2026-01-01
sortBy	enum	No	relevance	relevance / viewCount / date
language	enum	No	en	Relevance language code
proxyConfiguration	object	No	—	Apify Proxy settings

Example input

{
  "keyword": "sourdough bread for beginners",
  "youtubeApiKey": "YOUR_GOOGLE_API_KEY",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "publishedAfter": "2025-01-01",
  "sortBy": "viewCount",
  "language": "en"
}

Output

Each item in the dataset represents one video:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "title": "Sourdough Bread for Beginners (Full Tutorial)",
  "channelName": "BreadBakers",
  "channelId": "UCxxxxxx",
  "publishedAt": "2025-03-15T10:00:00Z",
  "duration": 1245,
  "viewCount": 850000,
  "likeCount": 42000,
  "commentCount": 3100,
  "channelSubscribers": 120000,
  "engagementRate": 0.053,
  "viewsPerSubscriber": 7.08,
  "nicheScore": 28333.3,
  "keyword": "sourdough bread for beginners",
  "searchRank": 1
}

Field descriptions

Field	Description
videoId	YouTube video ID
title	Video title
channelName	Channel name
channelId	YouTube channel ID
publishedAt	ISO 8601 publish date
duration	Video length in seconds
viewCount	Total view count
likeCount	Total like count
commentCount	Total comment count
channelSubscribers	Channel subscriber count (0 when using yt-dlp fallback)
engagementRate	(likeCount + commentCount) / viewCount
viewsPerSubscriber	viewCount / channelSubscribers
nicheScore	avgViews / videoCount — higher = better niche opportunity
keyword	The keyword that produced this result
searchRank	Position in the search results (1-indexed)

How the niche score works

nicheScore = (average viewCount across all results) / (number of results)

A niche with 3 results averaging 500 000 views each scores much higher than one with 50 results averaging 10 000 views — because it has high audience demand and low creator competition.

Use nicheScore to compare keywords head-to-head.

Getting a YouTube Data API key

1. Go to Google Cloud Console.
2. Create a project and enable YouTube Data API v3.
3. Generate an API key under Credentials.
4. Paste the key into the youtubeApiKey field.

The free quota is 10 000 units/day. Each run uses roughly 3–5 units per video (search + video details + channel stats).

Use cases

• Identify underserved YouTube niches before creating a channel.
• Benchmark competitor engagement rates for any keyword.
• Find trending topics by filtering publishedAfter to recent months.
• Build keyword research pipelines by running the actor on many keywords in sequence.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event billing. You are charged 1 event per keyword analyzed (regardless of how many videos are returned).