Real-Time Web Search API

Real-Time Web Search is a fast and reliable Google Search and SERP API. It returns organic results, AI Overviews, AI Mode answers, videos, places, news, knowledge graph, people also ask, and related searches as structured JSON via REST.

What it returns: full and lightweight SERP results across organic, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and rich result types.

This actor runs the same Real-Time Web Search API that developers use on RapidAPI and OpenWeb Ninja, with the same endpoints, parameters and output.

What you can do with it

• Track keyword rankings and SERP features for SEO tools
• Collect search results at scale for market and competitor research
• Ground AI agents and LLM apps with fresh web results and AI Mode answers
• Monitor brand mentions and news coverage across the web
• Find leads and websites matching any query or advanced search operator

Endpoints

Pick the endpoint in the Endpoint field. Each run makes one call to that endpoint and writes its results to the dataset.

Search Light

GET /search-light

Lightning fast endpoint for getting organic web search results in real-time. Returns raw organic results only, without AI Overviews, knowledge graph, or a total result count - use the Search endpoint when you need the full SERP. Supports all Google Advanced Search operators (site:, inurl:, intitle:, etc). Each request consumes 1 request credit.

Parameter	Required	Description
q	Yes
num	No	Default: 10.
gl	No	Default: us.
hl	No	Default: en.

Search

GET /search

Get real-time full-depth web search results via the heavy serp path, including organic results, ads, AI overviews, knowledge graph, places, top stories, inline videos, answer box, and discussions. Supports Google Search parameters (gl, hl, tbs, etc.) and city-level geo targeting. Note: Each request to this endpoint consumes 2 request credits.

Parameter	Required	Description
q	Yes	Search query. Supports all Google Advanced Search operators (site:, inurl:, intitle:, etc).
num	No	Maximum number of organic results to return per request (1-10). Default: 10.
start	No	Number of results to skip for pagination (default 0). Default: 0.
gl	No	The country / region for which to make the query. 2-letter country code, see ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. Default: us.
hl	No	The language to use for the search (Google's hl parameter). 2-letter language code, see ISO 639-1 alpha-2. Default: en.
location	No	Where the search originates from. Recommended to specify at city level to simulate a real user's search (e.g. London, England, United Kingdom).
uule	No	Google's own encoded location string (e.g. w+CAIQICIgU2VhdHRsZSxXYXNoaW5ndG9uLFVuaXRlZCBTdGF0ZXM=), passed to Google as is. Use it instead of location when you already generate uule values.
device	No	The device to simulate for the search. Mobile and tablet return Google's mobile SERP layout, whose rankings and features can differ from desktop. Allowed values: desktop (default), mobile, tablet. Values: desktop, mobile, tablet. Default: desktop.
lr	No	Restrict search results to a specific language. Uses lang_{two-letter language code} with | as delimiter (e.g. lang_fr|lang_de searches French and German pages only).
tbs	No	Advanced Google search parameters that aren't available using regular query parameters (e.g. qdr:d for the last day, qdr:w for the last week).
nfpr	No	Exclude results of the auto-corrected query when the original query is misspelled with nfpr=1, and include them with nfpr=0 (default). Values: 0, 1. Default: 0.
nhr	No	Exclude 'People also ask' style related questions from the results with nhr=1. Include them with nhr=0 (default). Values: 0, 1. Default: 0.
fetch_ai_overviews	No	Whether to return AI Overviews when available (false by default). When true or 1, if AI Overviews are available, each request consumes two request credits instead of one. Default: false.
return_organic_result_video_thumbnail	No	Whether to return a base64-encoded video_thumbnail field for organic video results (false by default). Default: false.

Search by URL

GET /search-by-url

Fetch a Google search results page from a full Google search URL, exactly as given, instead of building it from q, gl, hl and the other search parameters. Returns the parsed results, or the raw HTML of the page (data.html) with return_raw_html=true. With expand_ai_overviews=true the AI Overview is returned fully expanded, and the response also includes text ads when Google shows them.

Parameter	Required	Description
url	Yes	Full Google search URL to fetch, passed to Google as is. Must be a https://www.google.{domain}/search URL with a q parameter. Any other Google search parameters in the URL (gl, hl, start, tbs, uule, etc.) are kept.
device	No	The device to simulate for the search. Allowed values: desktop (default), mobile (an iPhone with iOS Safari), tablet (an iPad with Safari). Supported with and without expand_ai_overviews. Values: desktop, mobile, tablet. Default: desktop.
return_raw_html	No	Whether to return the raw HTML of the results page, without any parsing, as data.html with its length in data.html_length (false by default). Default: false.
expand_ai_overviews	No	Whether to return the AI Overview fully expanded (false by default). Default: false.

AI Mode

POST /ai-mode (parameters go in the JSON body)

Send a prompt/query and get structured results and reference links from Google's AI Mode. POST variant of the AI Mode endpoint - accepts the same parameters in a JSON request body, with no URL length limit (recommended for long prompts). Each request consumes 2 request credits.

Parameter	Required	Description
prompt	Yes	AI Mode prompt.
session_token	No	Specify a session token from previous AI Mode response to continue the chat from the same point (preserving history in context for continuous conversation).
tbs	No	This parameter defines advanced search parameters that aren't available using regular query parameters (to be searched).
location	No	Where the AI Mode search originates from, for location-dependent prompts such as local businesses, weather or events. Recommended to specify at city level to simulate a real user's search (e.g.
uule	No	Google's own encoded location string (e.g. w+CAIQICIgU2VhdHRsZSxXYXNoaW5ndG9uLFVuaXRlZCBTdGF0ZXM=), passed to Google as is. Use it instead of location when you already generate uule values.
gl	No	The country / region for which to make the query. 2-letter country code, see ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. Default: us.
hl	No	The language to use for the search (Google's hl parameter). 2-letter country code, see ISO 639-1 alpha-2. Default: en.
attachments	No	Optional list of document URLs (PDF) to attach to the prompt, as plain URL strings. Up to 5 files, 10 MB each. Images are not supported. Attaching one or more documents is charged a flat 1 extra request credit.

People Also Ask

GET /people-also-ask

Get the People Also Ask block for a Google search query, optionally with the answer body and source link for each question.

Parameter	Required	Description
q	Yes
gl	No	Default: us.
hl	No	Default: en.
location	No
lr	No	Restrict search results to a specific language. Uses lang_{two-letter language code} with | as delimiter (e.g. lang_fr|lang_de searches French and German pages only).
tbs	No	Advanced Google search parameters that aren't available using regular query parameters (e.g. qdr:d for the last day, qdr:w for the last week).
nfpr	No	Exclude results of the auto-corrected query when the original query is misspelled with nfpr=1, and include them with nfpr=0 (default). Values: 0, 1. Default: 0.
nhr	No	Exclude 'People also ask' style related questions from the results with nhr=1. Include them with nhr=0 (default). Those questions are exactly what this endpoint returns, so nhr=1 can produce an empty list. Values: 0, 1. Default: 0.
fetch_answers	No	Values: true, false, 0, 1. Default: true.

Search Light Bulk

POST /search-light-bulk (parameters go in the JSON body)

Perform real-time web searches for up to 100 queries in a single request (each query is counted/charged as a request credit).

Parameter	Required	Description
queries	Yes	Query or list of queries to search (max 100 items; each trimmed; each ≤ 5000 chars; duplicates removed server-side).
limit	No	Number of results to return (1–300; capped at 300). Default: 10.
gl	No	Geo/region code (lowercased). Default: us.
hl	No	Language code (lowercased). Default: en.

Example input

{
  "endpoint": "/search-light",
  "q": "how to build a website"
}

Example output

One dataset item per result. A Search Light item looks like this (trimmed):

{
  "title": "Website Builder - Create a Free Website | Canva",
  "snippet": "Create free professional websites on your own domain in minutes. Canva's website builder makes launching a one-page website easy with customizable templates ...",
  "url": "https://www.canva.com/website-builder/",
  "domain": "www.canva.com",
  "position": 1
}

The run's key-value store OUTPUT record holds the request parameters, the request id and any non-list fields of the response (for example a pagination cursor).

Pricing

Pay per event: you pay per API request, at the same rates as our API plans. Most runs are one request; some parameters (such as fetching several pages at once) count as several, exactly as they do on the API.

Apify plan	Price per 1,000 requests
Free	$4.00
Starter (Bronze)	$1.25
Scale (Silver)	$0.75
Business (Gold) and above	$0.50

A request that fails is not charged.

Using it from code

Run it through the Apify API or a client library, with the input above as the JSON body:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/openweb-ninja~real-time-web-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"endpoint":"/search-light","q":"how to build a website"}'

Need higher volume or a direct REST API? Real-Time Web Search API is also available as an API on OpenWeb Ninja and RapidAPI.

Support

For custom plans, high volumes or anything else:

• Email: support@openwebninja.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/wxJxGsZgha