YouTube Search Scraper

Overview

The YouTube Search Scraper is an Apify actor that extracts metadata from YouTube search results. It retrieves video details such as title, video ID, uploader, duration, view count, and more, based on a search query, with flexible filters for Shorts, duration, upload date, and sorting. The actor uses Apify’s proxies to ensure reliable scraping and includes robust error handling, logging, and retry logic. It’s ideal for analyzing YouTube search trends and is accessible via Apify’s UI, CLI, or API in any programming language.

Features

• Comprehensive Metadata: Extracts title, video ID, URL, uploader, uploader ID, upload date, duration, view count, thumbnail, and Shorts status.
• Search Filters: Supports filtering by Shorts (shorts_only, exclude_shorts), duration (min_duration, max_duration), upload date (last_24h, last_week, last_month, last_year), and sorting (relevance, date, view_count, rating).
• Proxy Support: Uses Apify’s proxies for reliable scraping.
• Robust Execution: Includes detailed logging, 3-minute actor timeout, 90-second scrape timeout, and exponential backoff retries.
• Output Formats: Data stored in Apify’s dataset, exportable as JSON or CSV, with a table view in Apify UI.
• Cross-Language Access: Run via Apify’s REST API or SDKs (Python, Node.js, etc.) for integration with any language.

Input Configuration

The actor accepts a JSON input with the following fields:

Field	Type	Description	Required	Default
query	String	Search query for YouTube videos	Yes	-
max_results	Integer	Maximum number of videos to scrape (1–100)	No	10
shorts_only	Boolean	Only include Shorts in results	No	false
exclude_shorts	Boolean	Exclude Shorts from results	No	false
min_duration	Integer	Minimum video duration in seconds	No	-
max_duration	Integer	Maximum video duration in seconds	No	-
upload_date_filter	String	Filter by upload date (last_24h, last_week, last_month, last_year)	No	"" (Any)
sort_by	String	Sort results (relevance, date, view_count, rating)	No	relevance
sleep_interval	Integer	Seconds to wait between requests	No	2
max_retries	Integer	Maximum retry attempts for failed requests	No	3

Notes:

• shorts_only and exclude_shorts are mutually exclusive.
• max_results is capped at 100 to avoid excessive runtime.
• Increase sleep_interval or max_retries for heavy scraping or persistent errors.

Example Input:

{
    "query": "python tutorial",
    "max_results": 20,
    "shorts_only": false,
    "exclude_shorts": true,
    "min_duration": 300,
    "max_duration": 3600,
    "upload_date_filter": "last_month",
    "sort_by": "view_count",
    "sleep_interval": 2,
    "max_retries": 3
}

Output Format

The actor outputs data to Apify’s dataset, viewable as a table in the Apify UI or exportable as JSON/CSV. Each record contains:

Field	Type	Description	Format
title	String	Video title	Text
video_id	String	Unique video ID	Text
url	String	Video URL	Text
uploader	String	Uploader name	Text
uploader_id	String	Uploader ID	Text
upload_date	String	Upload date (YYYYMMDD)	Date
duration	Integer	Duration in seconds	Number
view_count	Integer	Number of views	Number
thumbnail	String	Thumbnail URL	Text
short	Boolean	Is the video a Short	Boolean
error	String	Error message if scraping failed	Text

Example Output:

{
    "title": "Python Tutorial for Beginners",
    "video_id": "abc123",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
    "uploader": "TechTutorials",
    "uploader_id": "UCxyz",
    "upload_date": "20250101",
    "duration": 1800,
    "view_count": 100000,
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123/hqdefault.jpg",
    "short": false
}