Google Trends Scraper

Extract real structured data from Google Trends Explore: interest over time, interest by region, related queries, and related topics. Version 3 no longer substitutes ordinary Google web results when Trends is unavailable.

Modes

• single: collect one query.
• batch: collect query plus up to 19 deduplicated queries concurrently.
• dataTypes: choose any of interestOverTime, interestByRegion, relatedQueries, and relatedTopics.

The global maxItems limit is divided fairly across queries and available data types. Timeline samples span the complete requested date range, while related-query samples include both top and rising terms when Google exposes them.

Input

Field	Purpose	Default
query	Keyword or topic	required
mode, queries	Single or multiple independent searches	single
dataTypes	Structured Trends widgets to collect	all four
geo	Two-letter country code; empty means worldwide	US
language	Google locale	en-US
timeRange	Preset Google time window	today 12-m
startDate, endDate	Optional custom YYYY-MM-DD range	—
category	Google Trends category ID	0
searchType	web, images, news, shopping, or youtube	web
maxItems	Global record limit	100
maxConcurrency	Parallel query jobs	2
maxRequestRetries	Temporary-error retries	2
requestTimeoutSecs	Per-endpoint timeout	45
timezoneOffsetMinutes	Trends timezone offset	0
proxyConfiguration	Apify or custom proxy configuration	optional

Example:

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "queries": ["machine learning"],
  "dataTypes": ["interestOverTime", "interestByRegion", "relatedQueries"],
  "geo": "US",
  "timeRange": "today 3-m",
  "maxItems": 60,
  "maxConcurrency": 2,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "countryCode": "US"
  }
}

Output

Every record uses a stable 38-field contract. Common fields include id, type, queryPosition, query, title, term, value, formattedValue, url, geo, timeRange, searchType, source, and scrapedAt. Type-specific fields include:

• Timeline: date, formattedTime, hasData, isPartial.
• Region: geoCode, geoName.
• Related query/topic: rank, rankType, growthPercentage, isBreakout, topicId, topicType.

Optional values not supplied by Google are omitted instead of stored as null, empty strings, or fabricated defaults. Widget tokens, request signatures, cookies, proxy credentials, and raw API responses are never stored.

Proxy behavior

Direct datacenter traffic can receive HTTP 429. For production Apify Cloud runs, use RESIDENTIAL or an authorized custom proxy. The specialized GOOGLE_SERP group is suitable for Google Search result pages, but Google Trends widget endpoints return HTTP 400 through that group, so it is not the right transport for this Actor.

The Actor validates status codes and content types before parsing, preserves cookies for each query, retries only temporary failures with bounded backoff, and never attempts to solve CAPTCHA or bypass authentication/access controls.

Performance

A representative single query with four requested data types completes in a few seconds of application time. A two-query batch normally completes well below three minutes, subject to proxy and target latency.