YouTube Channel Database Search — Find Creators by Niche

Search YouTube channels by niche keyword and optional subscriber range. Export channel metadata: name, subscriber count, video count, total views, description, contact email, country, and joined date. Built for influencer outreach, B2B lead generation, niche research, and media-buyer audience analysis.

What it does

This Apify Actor searches YouTube's channel type-filtered results pages and extracts structured metadata for each channel found:

• 🎬 Channel name and canonical channel URL
• 👥 Subscriber count (parsed from 1.23M, 450K, etc.)
• 🎥 Video count posted to the channel
• 📊 Total views across all videos
• 📝 Channel description (search-visible snippet)
• 📧 Contact email (extracted from the channel's About page)
• 🌍 Country (where the channel reports being based)
• 📅 Joined date (when the channel was created)

Why channel-level data matters

Keywords surface videos, but for outreach and partnership decisions you need channel data:

• Find micro-influencers (1K–100K subs) in a specific niche for affordable sponsorships
• Build a creator database with emails ready for outreach campaigns
• Identify rising channels by filtering on subscriber ranges
• Segment by country for localized media buys
• Benchmark competitors' growth using video count + total views

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
searchQuery	string	✅	—	Niche keyword or phrase (e.g. cooking, tech reviews)
maxResults	integer	❌	50	Max channels to return (1–500)
minSubscribers	integer	❌	—	Exclude channels below this subscriber count
maxSubscribers	integer	❌	—	Exclude channels above this subscriber count

Example input

{
  "searchQuery": "sustainable fashion",
  "maxResults": 100,
  "minSubscribers": 5000,
  "maxSubscribers": 500000
}

Output

Each dataset record:

{
  "channelName": "SustainableStyle Co.",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1234abcd",
  "subscriberCount": 84200,
  "videoCount": 412,
  "totalViews": 5230000,
  "description": "Eco-friendly fashion tips, thrift hauls, and brand reviews.",
  "email": "hello@sustainablestyle.co",
  "country": "United States",
  "joinedDate": "March 15, 2018"
}

How it works

1. Search — Opens YouTube channel search with the type=channel filter.
2. Paginate — Scrolls the rendered results until the requested count is reached or the page stops growing.
3. Parse — Merges embedded ytInitialData results with rendered channel cards and removes duplicates.
4. Filter — Applies subscriber bounds when YouTube exposes a numeric count. Channels with hidden counts remain in the results rather than being misclassified as zero.
5. Enrich — Visits each surviving channel's /about page to extract available public details.
6. Export — Pushes clean records to the Apify dataset.

Tech stack

• Python + Apify SDK (async with Actor)
• Playwright/Chromium for JavaScript-rendered search and About pages
• BeautifulSoup for HTML and embedded ytInitialData parsing
• Compact-count parsing for values such as 1.23M, 450K, and 2B
• Residential-proxy retries when direct access is blocked

Use cases

• Influencer marketing agencies building target lists by niche + subscriber tier
• B2B SaaS doing founder-led outreach to niche creators
• Affiliate managers identifying channels for rev-share offers
• Media buyers segmenting creators by country and audience size
• Competitive intelligence analysts benchmarking channel growth

Local development

cd youtube-channel-database-search
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
apify run                   # run locally with simulated platform env
apify validate-schema       # validate .actor/input_schema.json
apify push                  # deploy to Apify platform (when ready)

Notes & limitations

• YouTube serves results as JavaScript-rendered pages. The Actor performs controlled scrolling, but YouTube can still cap or vary the number of channel cards returned for a query.
• Subscriber bounds are applied only when YouTube exposes a numeric subscriber count; channels with hidden counts are retained with their visible subscriber text.
• Email extraction depends on the channel having a public email in its About page. Many channels do not expose emails publicly.
• Country and joined date depend on YouTube rendering these fields in the About page markup, which varies by channel type (brand vs personal).

Legal & ethical notes

• This actor only accesses publicly visible YouTube pages.
• Respect YouTube's Terms of Service and robots.txt.
• Use rate limits responsibly; do not overload YouTube's servers.
• For production workloads, prefer the official YouTube Data API v3.

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Generated by Hermes Agent (Atreyu) — Autonomous Apify Engine.