YouTube Search Scraper

Search YouTube programmatically and extract detailed result listings including videos, channels, and playlists. This actor uses YouTube's InnerTube API to deliver structured search results with metadata like view counts, publish dates, durations, and thumbnails.

Overview

The YouTube Search Scraper automates YouTube search queries and returns structured data from the results page. Unlike browser-based scraping, this actor communicates directly with YouTube's internal InnerTube API, making it faster and more reliable. It supports pagination to collect large result sets and can filter by content type (videos, channels, or playlists). Each result includes comprehensive metadata ready for analysis, reporting, or integration with downstream data pipelines.

Features

• Search YouTube with any query string and get structured results
• Filter results by type: videos, channels, or playlists
• Automatic pagination to collect up to 500 results per query
• Multiple queries in a single run for batch processing
• Rich metadata extraction including view counts, publish dates, durations, and descriptions
• Live stream detection for real-time content monitoring
• Thumbnail URLs for visual applications and reporting
• Channel information with subscriber counts and video counts

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
queries	array	(required)	List of search query strings to execute
maxResults	integer	50	Maximum results per query (1-500)
searchType	string	"video"	Filter by: video, channel, or playlist
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy	Proxy settings to avoid rate limiting

Output Format

Each result in the dataset contains the following fields depending on the result type:

Video results: type, searchQuery, videoId, url, title, channelName, channelUrl, viewCount, publishedTime, duration, thumbnailUrl, description, isLive, scrapedAt

Channel results: type, searchQuery, channelId, url, title, subscriberCount, videoCount, description, thumbnailUrl, scrapedAt

Use Cases

This actor serves a wide range of professional and research applications. Market researchers can track brand mentions and competitor content across YouTube by monitoring search results for relevant keywords over time. Content creators and SEO specialists can analyze ranking factors by studying which videos appear for target keywords and examining their metadata patterns. Media monitoring teams can track trending topics and identify viral content early by running regular searches on industry-specific terms. Recruitment teams and talent scouts can find creators and influencers in specific niches by searching for content categories and analyzing channel metrics. Academic researchers can study content ecosystems, information spread, and platform dynamics by collecting search result data at scale.

Integrations and Related Actors

Build comprehensive YouTube data pipelines by combining this search scraper with other quick_kirigami YouTube actors. Use search results to feed video URLs into the YouTube Transcript Scraper for full-text content extraction. Combine with other quick_kirigami YouTube tools for complete channel analysis, comment scraping, and metadata enrichment. The structured output integrates easily with Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, and webhook-based automation workflows through Apify integrations.

Pricing and Performance

The actor processes approximately 1,000 search results per dollar of Apify platform credits. Each search query page returns about 20 results, so reaching the maximum of 500 results per query requires approximately 25 API calls. Built-in rate limiting with 300ms delays between pages prevents throttling. Memory usage stays low since results are pushed to the dataset incrementally. For heavy workloads with many concurrent queries, enable Apify Proxy to distribute requests across multiple IP addresses and maximize throughput.