# Changelog of WeChat Channels Scraper — 视频号 Video Search (`sian.agency/wechat-channels-scraper`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/sian.agency/wechat-channels-scraper/changelog.md
- **Full Actor documentation**: https://apify.com/sian.agency/wechat-channels-scraper.md

## Changelog

All notable changes to WeChat Channels Scraper will be documented in this file.

### \[2026-09-09]

#### 🔎 Video Search returns about twice as many videos

- **~24 unique videos per keyword, up from ~12.** WeChat Channels ranks search results two ways — newest first and most relevant first — and the two rankings barely overlap. We now read both and merge them, so a search returns roughly double the videos it used to.
- **More engagement data.** Like counts now arrive on most rows instead of roughly a third of them.
- **Faster.** A search finishes in about 3 seconds instead of 5, because we no longer request deeper result pages that WeChat Channels answers with videos you already have.
- Pricing is unchanged: you are still billed per unique video saved, and duplicates are still free.

#### ⚙️ Free-plan limits adjusted

- Free Apify plans now receive **1 run per day** on this Actor (was 10), still at 10 rows per run — enough to see the full output shape before you decide. Paid plans are unchanged and uncapped.
- Prices are unchanged for every operation.

### \[2026-08-09]

#### 🔎 Account Search now finds creators by topic, not just exact name

- **Partial and topic keywords work.** Searching `美食` now returns food creators; previously only an exact display name like `央视新闻` matched, and anything else came back empty.
- **Up to 10 creator accounts per search** instead of 0–1, with the same fields (verified profession, signature, avatar, `v2Name`) and the same per-account price.
- Results are ranked by relevance; the run log tells you how many further matches exist.

#### ⚙️ Free-plan limits adjusted

- Free Apify plans now receive **10 rows per run** (was 25) and **10 runs per day** on this Actor. Paid plans are unchanged and uncapped.
- Prices are unchanged for every operation.

### \[2026-06-11]

#### 🚀 3 new operations — the actor is now multi-op

The upstream data source brought more WeChat Channels endpoints online, so the actor grows from video-search-only to **four operations**:

- **👤 Account Search** (`searchAccount`) — find creator accounts by display name (e.g. 央视新闻); returns verified profession, signature, avatar, and the creator's `v2Name`.
- **🎬 Account Videos** (`accountVideos`) — list a creator's full video catalog by `v2Name`, with object IDs, media type, and engagement.
- **🔗 Resolve Export ID** (`convertExportId`) — turn a Video Search result's `exportId` into its canonical object ID + creator.
- Chain them: Video Search → Resolve Export ID → Account Videos, or Account Search → Account Videos.

Only endpoints that consistently return clean data are wired; intermittently-failing ones (comments, full metrics, downloads) are intentionally left out and will be added as they stabilize.

### \[2026-06-09]

#### 🎉 WeChat Channels Scraper — Launch!

- **Keyword Video Search** — Search WeChat Channels (视频号) for any term and export a clean dataset of matching short videos.
- **Direct Video & Cover URLs** — Every result includes the playable CDN video link and cover image, not just a title.
- **Smart De-duplication** — WeChat Channels recycles results across deep pages; we dedupe by video ID and never charge for the same video twice.
- **Target-driven Collection** — Set how many *unique* videos you want; the actor paginates until it hits the target or the feed is exhausted.
- **Creator & Engagement Capture** — Account name, avatar, publish dates, hot-content flag, and like counts where the source exposes them.

#### 💎 User Benefits

- Get WeChat Channels (视频号) video data without a WeChat account, phone, or API key.
- Pay only for unique results — built-in de-duplication keeps your bill tied to real videos.
- Clean camelCase fields plus the full raw payload, exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel.
- Two dataset views: a complete Overview and a curated Key-fields view.

#### 🎯 Use Cases

- Content teams discovering fresh 视频号 videos on a topic or hashtag.
- Brand managers monitoring how a brand or campaign appears on WeChat Channels.
- Strategists researching rising trends and creators on China's biggest in-app video feed.
- Researchers collecting direct video URLs and covers for a keyword corpus.