SERP & Keyword Research — Keyword Ideas + SERP API (No API Key · DataForSEO / Ahrefs Alternative)

One keyword in, hundreds of keyword ideas out — plus the live SERP and the questions people actually ask. SERP & Keyword Research is a fast, keyless keyword research API built for SEO workflows and AI agents. Give it a seed keyword and get back real keyword ideas from Google autocomplete, the current organic SERP, People Also Ask questions, and related searches — all in one structured record. A practical DataForSEO / Ahrefs / SEMrush alternative for the core "keyword ideas + SERP + questions" job — no API key, no seat license, no browser.

🏆 Why this keyword research API?

4 data sources in 1 row (autocomplete ideas + SERP + People Also Ask + related) · 100+ real long-tail ideas per seed · batch up to 100 keywords · fully keyless (no DataForSEO/Ahrefs/SEMrush/SerpAPI account) · agent-native pay-per-result. A drop-in SEO MCP tool an AI agent can call mid-task — with no API key.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 💡 Real keyword ideas — Google autocomplete (the same suggestion engine behind the search box): the queries real users type — the gold standard for long-tail discovery.
• 🔁 Idea expansion modes — standard (seed + question prefixes + modifiers = 100+ ideas), deep (also appends a–z, answer-the-public style), or off (seed suggestions only).
• 🔎 Live SERP — the organic results ranking right now: rank, title, url, snippet, source — a lightweight built-in SERP API.
• ❓ People Also Ask — question-style results for FAQ sections, topic clusters and content briefs.
• 🕸️ Related searches — expand a single seed into a whole topic map for content planning.
• 🤖 Agent-native (SEO MCP) — pay-per-result pricing means an AI agent can research a keyword, pay per result, and reason over the output.
• 📦 Batch — research up to 100 keywords in one run with configurable concurrency.
• 🛡️ Resilient — every source is best-effort and independently guarded; if one returns nothing the others still fill the row, and the Actor never crashes on a single keyword.
• 💾 Export anywhere — download as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read live via the Apify API.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — type one or more seed keywords into Keywords (or a single keyword into the Single keyword field), pick a Region / language and toggle what to collect.
2. Run — click Start. Each keyword becomes one dataset row with its ideas, SERP, questions and related searches.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it live via the Apify API.

📥 Input

Give the Actor one or more seed keywords. Everything else has sensible defaults.

Example — single keyword, full research

{
  "keywords": ["mcp server"],
  "maxSerpResults": 10,
  "expansion": "standard",
  "region": "us-en"
}

Example — batch, deep long-tail, German region

{
  "keywords": ["kaffeevollautomat", "espressomaschine", "milchaufschäumer"],
  "expansion": "deep",
  "maxSerpResults": 15,
  "region": "de-de",
  "concurrency": 5
}

Example — ideas + questions only (no SERP), for content briefs

{
  "keyword": "ai agent framework",
  "includeSerp": false,
  "includePaa": true,
  "includeRelated": true,
  "expansion": "standard"
}

Field	Type	Description	Default
keywords	array	One or more seed keywords (batch up to 100). Each becomes one dataset row.	[]
keyword	string	A single seed keyword (use this or keywords).	–
maxSerpResults	integer	Organic results to return per keyword (1–30).	10
includeAutocomplete	boolean	Fetch Google autocomplete keyword ideas.	true
expansion	string	off, standard (seed + questions + modifiers), or deep (also a–z long-tail).	standard
includeSerp	boolean	Return the live organic SERP.	true
includePaa	boolean	Collect People Also Ask questions (best-effort).	true
includeRelated	boolean	Collect related searches for topic expansion.	true
region	string	Region/language code (us-en, uk-en, de-de, fr-fr, es-es…).	us-en
concurrency	integer	Keywords researched in parallel (1–10).	3
useApifyProxy	boolean	Route through Apify datacenter proxy to avoid per-IP rate limits.	true
proxyGroups	array	Override proxy group, e.g. ["RESIDENTIAL"]. Empty = datacenter (AUTO).	[]

📤 Output

One clean dataset row per keyword. Here is a trimmed sample record:

{
  "keyword": "mcp server",
  "region": "us-en",
  "autocompleteSuggestions": [
    "mcp server list",
    "mcp server python",
    "mcp server example",
    "mcp server claude desktop"
  ],
  "serpResults": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "title": "Model Context Protocol — Example Servers",
      "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/examples",
      "snippet": "A collection of reference MCP server implementations...",
      "source": "modelcontextprotocol.io"
    }
  ],
  "peopleAlsoAsk": [
    "What is an MCP server?",
    "How do I build an MCP server?"
  ],
  "relatedKeywords": ["mcp client", "mcp tools", "model context protocol"],
  "suggestionCount": 4,
  "serpCount": 10,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Where the data comes from

• Keyword ideas — Google autocomplete (Suggest) JSON. This is the keyword-ideas engine.
• SERP — DuckDuckGo HTML organic results.
• People Also Ask — question blocks parsed from the Bing SERP (best-effort).
• Related keywords — Bing related searches + DuckDuckGo related, merged and deduped.

Every source is best-effort and independently guarded: if one returns nothing, the others still fill the row.

💡 Use cases

• SEO keyword research — turn one seed into hundreds of long-tail keyword ideas in seconds.
• Content briefs & FAQ pages — mine People Also Ask questions and related searches for structure.
• Topic clustering — expand a niche into a full content map for a pillar-and-cluster strategy.
• Rank tracking & SERP analysis — capture who ranks for a term today and how the SERP looks.
• AI agents & automation — a "research this keyword" tool an agent can call mid-task and pay per result.
• Programmatic SEO — feed thousands of seeds and build data-driven landing pages at scale.

👥 Who uses it

SEO specialists & content strategists · programmatic-SEO and affiliate teams · content marketers building briefs and FAQs · growth teams doing topic research · AI-agent builders wiring a keyless keyword/SERP tool · founders validating niches.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — one charge per keyword that returns data; keywords that return nothing are still saved but never charged. No monthly fee, no seat license, no idle cost. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a DataForSEO / Ahrefs / SEMrush alternative? Yes. It covers the core "keyword ideas + SERP + People Also Ask" job those keyword-research tools are used for, without their API keys or subscriptions. You run it on Apify and pay per result.

Do I need an API key? No. It is fully keyless and works out of the box with Apify's datacenter proxy — no DataForSEO, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz or SerpAPI account required.

Where do the keyword ideas come from? From Google autocomplete — the same suggestion engine behind Google's search box. Those are real queries people type, which makes them ideal for long-tail keyword research.

Does it return search volume or keyword difficulty? No. This Actor focuses on keyword ideas, the live SERP and questions — the discovery side of keyword research. It does not estimate monthly search volume or difficulty scores.

Can I get the SERP too? Yes. Each keyword includes the live organic SERP (rank, title, URL, snippet, source) as a built-in SERP API, capped by your maxSerpResults.

Can it find People Also Ask questions? Yes — enable Include People Also Ask and the Actor collects question-style results, ideal for FAQ content and topic clusters. It's best-effort, so it returns an empty list when none are surfaced.

Can I research keywords in other languages / regions? Yes. Set the Region / language field, e.g. uk-en, de-de, fr-fr, es-es. It controls both the autocomplete language and the SERP region.

Can I use it as an AI agent / MCP tool? Yes. It's designed for AI agents via the Apify MCP server — a keyless SEO MCP tool an agent can call to research keywords and analyze the SERP autonomously, paying per result.

How much data can I get? Batch up to 100 seeds per run, each returning 100+ ideas (in standard/deep expansion) plus SERP, questions and related searches.

How do I export the data to CSV or JSON? Run the Actor and download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel from the Output tab, or read it live via the Apify API.

🔗 More SEO, research & AI tools by logiover

Pair keyword research with the rest of the research-intelligence suite:

Actor	What it does
Website SEO Audit Crawler	Full on-page SEO audit across an entire site
JSON-LD Schema & Meta Tag Extractor	Structured data, OpenGraph & Twitter Cards from any URL
Google News Scraper	News headlines and articles by query
Google Ads Transparency Scraper	Ads and advertisers from Google's transparency center
Competitor Ad Intelligence	Cross-platform competitor ad monitoring
News Intelligence Scraper	Multi-source news monitoring
URL to Markdown	Convert any URL to clean Markdown for LLMs

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to refresh keyword and SERP snapshots daily or weekly. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Wire it into Claude, Cursor or any MCP client to let an agent do live keyword research on demand, or connect Make, n8n or Zapier for automated SEO pipelines.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a bug or need an extra field or region? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor queries publicly available search suggestions and organic results and is intended for legitimate SEO research, content and analytics use. You are responsible for complying with the underlying search engines' terms and any applicable local laws.

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This Actor is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SERP & Keyword Research; SERP & Keyword Research and all other trademarks mentioned here are the property of their respective owners.

SERP & Keyword Research scraping — frequently asked questions

Do I need a SERP & Keyword Research API key, account or login?

No. This Actor reads publicly available pages and feeds, so there is nothing to register for and no credentials to manage.

How do I export SERP & Keyword Research data to CSV, Excel, JSON or Google Sheets?

Open the Storage tab after a run and pick the format you want — CSV, Excel, JSON, XML or an HTML table. For Google Sheets, Airtable or a database, use the dataset URL or the Apify API so the sheet refreshes itself on every run.

Can I schedule this SERP & Keyword Research scraper to run daily or hourly?

Yes. Use the Schedules tab and pick a cadence. Daily is enough for most tracking work; pick hourly only if the rows you care about really do change that fast.

How many rows can I get, and what does it cost?

See the volume section above for a measured figure. Billing is per result, so you pay for the rows you actually receive and a run that finds nothing costs nothing.

Is scraping SERP & Keyword Research legal?

This Actor collects only information that SERP & Keyword Research publishes publicly. It does not log in, does not defeat access controls and does not touch private data. You remain responsible for how you use the output, including under GDPR and similar rules where personal data is involved.

What happens if SERP & Keyword Research blocks the run or changes its layout?

A refused exit IP is swapped for a fresh one within a quarter of a second and retried, and rate limiting is waited out rather than fought. If nothing gets through, the run fails with the reason instead of reporting success with zero rows — so an empty result always means "no matches", never "the source would not answer".

Can I use this with an AI agent, LangChain or an MCP client?

Yes. The Actor is callable over the Apify API and through Apify's MCP server, so an agent can run it and read the dataset back as a tool call.

📝 Changelog

2026-11-01

• Monthly health check (2026-11-01): a live run on the current build completed successfully and returned data. Input options, output fields and pricing are unchanged.
• README refreshed: 1 link to renamed Actors updated, 5 links to retired Actors removed; independence disclaimer added.

2026-10-15

• A run that reaches its maximum cost per run now stops cleanly with its results saved and a status message, instead of ending as aborted.
• A proxy group your account cannot use no longer stops the run at start-up; it falls back to the default Apify Proxy.
• Memory is managed within the run's own limit, which removes a rare out-of-memory crash on large pages.

2026-09-23

• Fleet-wide quality audit. Verified end to end against live data and re-checked the input schema, the output columns and the run configuration.
• Output verified on a live run: 9 columns returned, 88.9% of cells populated.
• Run reliability reviewed: 100.0% of public runs succeeded in the last 30 days.
• Input schema, output schema and pricing configuration reviewed.
• Noted that 1 column(s) came back empty in this sample (relatedKeywords); these are under review.

2026-09-01

• Fleet-wide health check. Verified against this Actor's real run history: 30-day success rate, output row counts, per-field fill rates, and peak memory against the configured memory limit.
• Reviewed for the failure patterns that have cost this fleet runs — unguarded proxy setup, retry loops that can outlast the run's own time budget, and full-page HTML parsing that can exhaust a small container.
• No change to input, output fields or scraping logic.

2026-08-11

• Maintenance release: refreshed the build and dependencies.
• Re-verified live execution, non-empty structured output and dataset field/type integrity.
• Reviewed reliability (retries, pagination) and output quality as part of a full-fleet QA pass.

2026-08-01

• Completed the August 2026 full health check: verified empty/programmatic default, Console UI default, and two source-informed alternative inputs on Apify.
• Confirmed successful live execution, non-empty structured output, dataset-field/type integrity, and logical sample quality within the 5-minute quality window.
• Replaced the field-level output schema with a canonical results dataset link so run results open correctly in the Apify Console.

2026-08-01 — Health-check remediation

• August 2026 monthly health-check remediation is in progress; this build contains fixes verified from empty/default, Console-default, targeted live probes, or field-level semantic review.
• Replaced the field-level output schema with a canonical results dataset link so run results open correctly in the Apify Console.
• The final four-input matrix verdict will be appended after post-build cloud revalidation.

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: added shields badges, a green "why" callout, a fuller input table (expansion modes, concurrency, proxy), extra ready-to-run example scenarios, an SEO/AI cross-promo grid, and a clearer quick-start.

2026-07-01

• Initial release: keyless keyword ideas (Google autocomplete) + live SERP + People Also Ask + related searches in one record; batch, region/language control, pay-per-result for AI agents.

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*Maintained: last verified 2026-11-01 — checked end-to-end against live run history (reliability, output fields and types, and time/memory budgets).