USA Today Keyword Search

What does USA Today Keyword Search Scraper do?

USA Today Keyword Search Scraper searches usatoday.com by keyword or phrase and returns full article detail for every match - not just a title and snippet. For each result it fetches the complete headline, byline, publish and update timestamps, full body text, every image URL, and video URLs when present. Running it on Apify means no servers to manage, one-click scheduling to catch new coverage of a topic as it publishes, and instant export to JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Why use USA Today Keyword Search Scraper?

• Brand and reputation monitoring - get alerted the moment USA Today publishes something about your company, product, or public figure.
• Research - pull every USA Today article mentioning a topic, event, or name for a dataset or literature review.
• Newsjacking and PR - see how a story is developing across USA Today's coverage in real time.
• Competitive intelligence - track a competitor's or industry's press coverage over time.

How to use USA Today Keyword Search Scraper

1. Click Try for free on the Actor page (or open the Input tab if you're already running it).
2. Enter a query - any keyword or phrase you'd search for on USA Today's own search box.
3. Optionally set maxResults to control how many matching articles get full detail pulled.
4. Click Start and watch results land in the dataset in real time.
5. Export the finished dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

Input

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Required. Keyword or phrase to search for.
maxResults	integer	Maximum number of matching articles to fetch full detail for (default 50).

See the Input tab for the full schema.

Example input:

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output

Each dataset item is one matching article, identical in shape to the companion USA Today Articles Scraper's output, plus the searchQuery field:

{
  "searchQuery": "artificial intelligence",
  "url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/08/16/example-headline/91263969007/",
  "headline": "Example headline about a real AI story",
  "shortHeadline": "Shorter version of the headline",
  "description": "One-sentence summary of the article.",
  "articleSection": "money",
  "datePublished": "2026-08-16T09:00:00Z",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-16T09:30:00Z",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true,
  "authorName": "John Smith",
  "authorJobTitle": "Money Reporter",
  "authorUrl": "https://www.usatoday.com/staff/5678/john-smith/",
  "publisherName": "USA TODAY",
  "heroImageUrl": "https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/example.jpg",
  "images": ["https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/example.jpg"],
  "videoUrls": [],
  "tags": ["Technology", "Artificial Intelligence"],
  "bodyText": "Full multi-paragraph article body text..."
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data table

Field	Description
searchQuery	The query that matched this article
url	Canonical article URL
headline / shortHeadline	Full and short headline variants
description	Article summary/deck
articleSection	The site's own taxonomy label for this article
datePublished / dateModified	ISO 8601 timestamps
isAccessibleForFree	false if the article is behind USA Today's subscriber paywall
authorName / authorJobTitle / authorUrl	Byline detail
heroImageUrl / images	Hero image and every inline image URL
videoUrls	Direct video URLs, when the article embeds one
tags	Editorial tags/keywords
bodyText	Full article body text

Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses Apify's Pay Per Event pricing at $1.5 per 1,000 articles scraped, well below comparable news-article scrapers on Apify Store. A typical 50-result search costs a fraction of a cent. No subscription or minimum spend required - you only pay for what you scrape.

Tips or Advanced options

• Keep maxResults modest for a quick check of the latest coverage; raise it to pull a full historical sweep of every USA Today article matching a query.
• Schedule this Actor on a recurring basis to catch new articles on a topic as USA Today publishes them.
• Pair with the companion USA Today Articles Scraper if you also want full-section browsing rather than keyword search.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

This Actor only reads publicly accessible pages on usatoday.com and does not bypass any paywall or login. Paywalled articles are still returned with isAccessibleForFree: false so you can filter them out downstream. Site layout changes on USA Today's end may occasionally require an update to this Actor - please use the Issues tab to report anything that looks wrong. Need a custom variant? Reach out via the Issues tab.