📈 Google Trends Scraper — All-in-One Real-Time & Historical Market Intelligence (Excel & CSV Ready)

The most powerful, cost-efficient, and reliable Google Trends data extractor on Apify. Extract realtime viral searches, 20-year historical timelines, sub-national geographic heatmaps, and +5,000% breakout keywords with automated residential proxy rotation. Supports 1-click Excel/CSV spreadsheet exports AND 100% backward-compatible JSON.

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⚡ UnitBytes · Search Trends & Market Demand Intelligence Ecosystem
📈 Google Trends All-in-One Scraper 📍 You are here All 5 endpoints, 1-Click Excel/CSV tabular rows, legacy JSON	📊 Google Trends Fast API Developer & AI Agents Low-latency REST API, MCP, webhooks

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⚡ 60-Second Quick Start: Get Trends in 3 Steps

1. Pick Your Endpoint & Keywords: Choose from interest_over_time, trending_now, interest_by_region, related_queries, or related_topics and enter your search terms.
2. Choose Output Format:
   • Select flat (Recommended) if you want 1-click Excel, CSV, or Google Sheets rows with dedicated columns.
   • Select legacy if you are integrating into an existing developer backend expecting a single JSON envelope.
3. Click Start: In seconds, view live results or click Export to download your clean spreadsheet!

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🌟 6 Game-Changing Features You Won't Find Anywhere Else

1. 🏆 All 5 Intelligence Endpoints in 1 Single Actor

Stop paying for or juggling multiple scrapers. This actor unifies:

• 🚀 trending_now: Real-time viral search spikes with hourly growth % and context news articles.
• 📈 interest_over_time: 2004–present timelines with multi-keyword normalized indexing.
• 🗺️ interest_by_region: Sub-national heatmaps down to Country, State/Province, and Metro DMA.
• 🔍 related_queries: Long-tail keyword mining separating established "Top" terms from "+5,000% Breakout" rising queries.
• 🏷️ related_topics: Semantic entity categorization from Google's Knowledge Graph.

2. 📊 1-Click Native Excel / CSV Exports (output_format: "flat")

Ever clicked "Export to Excel" on Apify only to get broken nested JSON or unusable [object Object] cells?
Our native flat mode formats every single data point into clean columnar rows (keyword, value, date, geoName, category) ready immediately for Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, PowerBI, Tableau, and Airtable — with zero python scripting or manual cleaning required.

3. 💰 True Zero-Startup-Fee ($0.00005 vs. $0.025 on typical actors)

Other scrapers charge a hidden $0.025 penalty fee every single time they start. If you run a scheduled job 10 times a day, you pay $7.50/month in startup taxes alone before receiving a single row! With UnitBytes, the start fee is virtually zero ($0.00005) — you pay strictly for the successful data points you extract.

4. 🛡️ Unbreakable 429 Rate-Limit Resilience with Rotating Residential Proxies

Google Trends aggressively blocks scraping traffic with HTTP 429 rate limits. While other scrapers fail and exit with error codes, our crawler automatically manages residential proxy sessions, detects blocks, and transparently retries until complete.

5. 🔄 Multi-Keyword Comparative Normalization (Up to 5 Keywords)

Compare up to 5 keywords side-by-side on the exact same 0–100 normalized index. See which competitor or product is truly dominating market share over time or across regions.

6. 🤖 AI Agent & Automation Native (Apify MCP Server Ready)

Plug this scraper directly into Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, or custom LLM agents via the hosted Apify MCP server — no API token configuration needed if your client supports Apify OAuth!

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🥊 Side-by-Side Feature Matrix vs. Market Alternatives

Feature / Capability	Other Scrapers	This Scraper (UnitBytes)
Available Endpoints	Usually only 1 or 2 modes	🏆 All 5 Endpoints in 1 Actor (Realtime, Timeline, Geo, Queries, Topics)
Spreadsheet Compatibility	Nested JSON only (unusable in Excel)	📊 Dual Output: 1-click Flat CSV/Excel rows OR Legacy JSON
Startup Penalty Fee	Often $0.025 per start on other actors	💰 $0.00 Startup Fee ($0.00005) — run small batches with zero penalty
Result Pricing	$0.0005 – $0.025 per item	⚡ From $0.00045 / result ($0.45 / 1,000) with Store Discounts
Anti-Blocking Protection	Basic retries on same IP (high failure rate)	🛡️ Automated Anti-Blocking & Dynamic Residential Proxy Rotation
Multi-Keyword Support	Drops secondary keywords on related searches	🔄 Automatic Multi-Keyword Looping across all endpoints
Enriched Context	Raw keyword strings only	📰 News articles, volume growth %, breakout tags (+5000%), & entity categories
AI Agent Readiness	Manual integration	🤖 Native compatibility with Apify MCP, N8N, Make, and LangChain

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📡 5 Core Intelligence Endpoints

Select your desired mode using the scrape_type dropdown:

1. 🚀 trending_now — Real-Time Search Pulses

Discover what the world is searching for right now. Monitor viral breakout spikes hourly with search volume estimates, growth percentages, category tags, and context-rich news articles.

• Best for: News aggregators, social media managers, viral product hunters.
• 💡 Profit Playbook: Catch viral product waves and breaking news 6–12 hours before they peak on TikTok, Reddit, or Twitter. Spin up affiliate pages, write trending content, or launch targeted ads with zero competitor bidding.

{
  "scrape_type": "trending_now",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "data": [
    {
      "keyword": "Champions League Draw",
      "volume": 500000,
      "volume_growth_pct": 850,
      "topic_names": ["Soccer", "Sports"],
      "started_timestamp": "2026-09-12T14:00:00+00:00",
      "news": [
        {
          "title": "Champions League group stage draw results and reactions...",
          "source": "Sky Sports",
          "url": "https://..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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2. 📈 interest_over_time — Historical Timelines (2004 – Today)

Analyze relative search interest (0–100 index) over any timeframe. Compare up to 5 keywords side-by-side on the exact same normalized index to track macro market trends, seasonality, and brand trajectory.

• Best for: E-commerce forecasting, algorithmic market research, brand sentiment analysis.
• 💡 Profit Playbook: Pinpoint the exact calendar week annual seasonal demand surges (e.g. "summer fashion", "tax prep", "fitness gifts"). Time your inventory orders and ad spend weeks ahead of the competition.

{
  "scrape_type": "interest_over_time",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2026-09-01T00:00:00+00:00",
      "OpenAI": 85,
      "Anthropic": 42,
      "isPartial": false
    }
  ]
}

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3. 🗺️ interest_by_region — Geographic Demand Heatmaps

Pinpoint exactly where consumer demand is centralized. Filter by Country, Region (State/Province), Metro DMA (Designated Market Area), or City.

• Best for: Local SEO optimization, targeted PPC ad spend, geographical product rollouts.
• 💡 Profit Playbook: Stop wasting ad budget nationally. Find the top 3 states or metro cities with 5x higher purchase intent, cut ad spend in low-demand areas, and boost ROAS immediately.

{
  "scrape_type": "interest_by_region",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "data": [
    {
      "geoName": "California",
      "geo": "US",
      "OpenAI": 92,
      "Anthropic": 84
    },
    {
      "geoName": "New York",
      "geo": "US",
      "OpenAI": 88,
      "Anthropic": 76
    }
  ]
}

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4. 🔍 related_queries — Long-Tail & Breakout Keyword Mining

Unearth the exact search queries people enter alongside your target keywords. Automatically separates established "Top" queries from explosive "Rising" breakout queries (up to +5000% growth).

• Best for: SEO keyword discovery, competitor gap analysis, blog post roadmap planning.
• 💡 Profit Playbook: Queries labeled with "+5,000% Breakout" represent explosive buyer searches where Google has almost zero established page-one search results yet. Target them immediately for effortless page-one SEO rankings.

{
  "scrape_type": "related_queries",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "data": [
    {
      "top": [
        { "query": "chatgpt login", "value": 100, "formattedValue": "100" },
        { "query": "chatgpt 5 release", "value": 85, "formattedValue": "85" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "rising": [
        { "query": "chatgpt voice mode free", "value": 4500, "formattedValue": "+4,500%" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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5. 🏷️ related_topics — Knowledge Graph Entity Intelligence

Extract Google's contextual entity groupings. Understand how Google's AI categorizes concepts, companies, and industries associated with your niche.

• Best for: Semantic SEO, topical authority building, programmatic entity optimization.
• 💡 Profit Playbook: Extract Google's Knowledge Graph entity IDs (mid) and topical groupings to build semantic topical clusters that Google's AI Overviews and search engines cite as primary authorities.

{
  "scrape_type": "related_topics",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "data": [
    {
      "top": [
        {
          "topic_title": "Artificial intelligence",
          "value": 100,
          "mid": "/m/0mkz",
          "type": "Field of study"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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📊 Output Formats: 1-Click Excel/CSV vs. Legacy JSON

Choose how you want your results structured using the output_format dropdown:

1. 📋 flat — Spreadsheet & No-Code Ready (Best for Excel, CSV, Google Sheets)

Outputs one clean row per data point. Clicking Export to Excel / CSV in Apify generates immediate, cleanly formatted columns without unparsed JSON or [object Object] cells.

• Best for: Marketing teams, SEO analysts, Airtable, Zapier, Google Sheets, PowerBI.

What your exported Excel / CSV spreadsheet looks like:

scrape_type	keyword	value	date	geoName
interest_over_time	OpenAI	92	2026-09-02T00:00:00Z	United States
interest_over_time	OpenAI	86	2026-09-03T00:00:00Z	United States
interest_over_time	Anthropic	42	2026-09-02T00:00:00Z	United States
interest_over_time	Anthropic	48	2026-09-03T00:00:00Z	United States

{
  "scrape_type": "interest_over_time",
  "event_index": 1,
  "error": false,
  "keyword": "AI",
  "value": 92,
  "date": "2026-09-02T00:00:00+00:00"
}

2. 📦 legacy — Classic Single-Object Envelope (Default — 100% Backward Compatible)

Packages all extracted data into a single nested object envelope with input metadata:

• Best for: Existing automated pipelines, custom backend code, and historical workflows.

{
  "scrape_type": "interest_over_time",
  "error": false,
  "error_message": null,
  "input_summary": { "keywords_count": 2, "timeframe": "today 1-m", "geo": "US" },
  "data": [
    { "date": "2026-09-02T00:00:00+00:00", "AI": 92, "Python": 7 },
    { "date": "2026-09-03T00:00:00+00:00", "AI": 86, "Python": 7 }
  ]
}

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⏱️ Timeframe vs. Data Granularity Guide

Google Trends automatically adjusts the time intervals of data points depending on the length of your chosen timeframe. Use this cheat sheet to select the right window:

Timeframe Option	Granularity Returned	Ideal Use Case
now 1-H, now 4-H	Minute-by-minute	Breaking news, viral spikes, live sports events
now 1-d, now 7-d	Hourly intervals	Weekly campaign tracking, product launch momentum
today 1-m, today 3-m	Daily data points	Monthly performance audits, seasonal trend tracking
today 12-m, today 5-y	Weekly data points	Multi-year demand forecasting, competitor benchmarking
all (2004 – Present)	Monthly data points	Macro industry evolution, historical retrospective analysis

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💎 Transparent Pay-Per-Event Pricing (No Start Fee Penalty)

Stop paying high recurring monthly subscriptions or hidden startup fees. This actor operates on Apify's Pay-Per-Event (PPE) model with full Apify Store Discounts enabled:

Benefit	Details
Zero Start Fee Penalty ($0.00005)	Other actors often charge $0.025 every time their scraper runs. We charge virtually $0 to start, saving you money on scheduled queries.
Industry-Leading Result Price ($0.00045)	Only $0.45 per 1,000 results ($0.00045 per item) — significantly cheaper than any competing Google Trends scraper.
Apify Store Discounts Supported	Volume rates scale down even further for Starter, Scale, and Business subscription plans.
Residential Proxies Included	Built-in smart residential proxy rotation is included at no additional charge.
No Compute Time Fees	You never pay for startup time, container memory, or scrape runtime delays.
Zero-Risk Guarantee	Failed requests or empty queries are never charged.

🏷️ 4-Tier Subscription Pricing Schedule

Thanks to Apify Store Discounts, your per-result price automatically scales down based on your Apify subscription tier:

Apify Plan Tier	Discount Level	Price per 1,000 Results	Unit Price per Result	Run Start Fee
Free	Base Rate	$0.45	$0.00045	$0.00 ($0.00005)
Starter	~11% Off	$0.40	$0.00040	$0.00 ($0.00005)
Scale	~22% Off	$0.35	$0.00035	$0.00 ($0.00005)
Business	~33% Off	$0.30	$0.00030	$0.00 ($0.00005)

[!TIP] Zero Startup Penalties: Unlike other scrapers that charge up to $0.025 on every single run start, UnitBytes charges virtually $0.00 to start across all tiers.

🥊 Real-World Cost Comparison (100 Runs / 5,000 Results)

Solution	Run Start Fee	Price per 1,000 Items	Total Cost	Savings
🏆 UnitBytes Google Trends Scraper	$0.00005	$0.45	$2.25	Best Value
Other Actors	$0.025	$0.50	$5.00	+122% More (2.2x)
Other Actors	$0.00	$3.00	$15.00	+566% More (6.6x)
Other Actors	$0.00005	$5.00	$25.00	+1,011% More (11x)
Other Actors	$0.025	$25.00	$127.50	+5,566% More (56x)

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🎯 High-Value Playbooks: How Users Win With This Scraper

🛍️ E-Commerce & Dropshipping: "Find Breakout Products Before Ad Costs Explode"

• The Problem: By the time a product trends on TikTok or Amazon Best Sellers, ad competition is fierce and margins are wiped out.
• The Playbook: Run trending_now on a daily schedule to catch viral product surges in their first 6 hours. Cross-reference with interest_over_time (5-year timeframe) to verify if the surge is an ephemeral fad or the beginning of a sustained seasonal buying curve.
• Result: Source and launch inventory 3–4 weeks before mass competition enters the market.

✍️ SEO & Content Creators: "Rank on Page 1 With Zero Backlinks"

• The Problem: Ranking for saturated head terms requires high domain authority and months of expensive backlink building.
• The Playbook: Input your core seed keywords into related_queries and filter for terms with the +5,000% Breakout flag. These represent queries with massive surge volume where existing search results are sparse or outdated.
• Result: Capture instant organic traffic and first-mover topical authority before competitors even identify the keywords.

🗺️ Performance Marketers & Local Agencies: "Slash Ad Waste by 40%"

• The Problem: Running national campaigns burns ad spend in low-interest states and cities.
• The Playbook: Query interest_by_region with geo_resolution: "DMA" or "REGION". Identify which specific metro areas or states have index scores of 80–100 vs. regions scoring below 20.
• Result: Reallocate ad budget to high-density demand centers, lowering customer acquisition cost (CAC) and increasing ROAS.

💸 Quantitative Trading & Financial Research: "Front-Run Consumer Demand Shifts"

• The Problem: Financial reports and earnings releases are lagging indicators.
• The Playbook: Track multi-year interest_over_time for publicly traded brands, crypto tokens, commodities, and retail tickers. Spikes in retail search volume often precede volume expansion and volatility.
• Result: Real-time consumer attention datasets feed directly into quantitative alpha and sentiment models.

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🤖 AI & Workflow Automations

Easily feed live search trends into your automated workflows and AI agents:

• 🔄 N8N & Make (Integromat): Trigger automated content creation or Slack alerts whenever a keyword spikes.
• 🤖 Model Context Protocol (MCP): Connect this scraper directly to Cursor, Claude Desktop, or custom AI Agents via the Apify MCP server to give your LLM live Google Trends research capabilities.
• 🐍 LangChain & LlamaIndex: Use Apify's official document loaders to build retrieval-augmented market intelligence bots.

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💻 Quick Start Code Examples

Integrate effortlessly into any language or workflow using the official Apify Client:

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

# Run Google Trends Scraper
run = client.actor("unitbytes/google-trends-scraper").call(run_input={
    "scrape_type": "interest_over_time",
    "keywords": ["OpenAI", "Anthropic", "DeepSeek"],
    "output_format": "flat",  # "flat" for 1-click Excel/CSV rows, or "legacy" for single object envelope
    "timeframe_type": "predefined",
    "predefined_timeframe": "today 12-m",
    "geo_selection_type": "Common Countries",
    "common_geo": "US",
    "max_events": 100
})

# Fetch and inspect the dataset
dataset = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
for result in dataset:
    print(result)

Node.js / JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('unitbytes/google-trends-scraper').call({
    scrape_type: 'related_queries',
    keywords: ['AI Tools'],
    output_format: 'flat', // 'flat' for tabular rows, or 'legacy' for classic JSON
    timeframe_type: 'predefined',
    predefined_timeframe: 'today 3-m',
    common_geo: 'US',
    max_events: 50
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

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⚙️ Input Configuration

Parameter	Type	Description
scrape_type	string	Endpoint to query: trending_now, interest_over_time, interest_by_region, related_queries, related_topics
output_format	string	Data layout: legacy (default, single nested JSON envelope) or flat (1-click tabular rows for Excel/CSV exports)
keywords	array	Target search terms (up to 5 keywords). Required for all modes except trending_now
predefined_timeframe	string	Quick timeframes: now 1-H, now 4-H, now 1-d, now 7-d, today 1-m, today 3-m, today 12-m, today 5-y, all
common_geo	string	Country filter (e.g., US, GB, DE, FR, CA, AU) or leave blank for worldwide
geo_resolution	string	Regional granularity for interest_by_region: COUNTRY, REGION, CITY, or DMA
gprop	string	Google property filter: "" (Web Search), images, news, froogle (Shopping), youtube
max_events	integer	Cap on results returned. Controls your total spend

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💡 Pro Tips for Best Results

1. Leave Proxies on Default: The scraper automatically assigns Apify Residential Proxies and cycles session IPs. You do not need to configure custom proxies.
2. Worldwide vs. Country-Specific: For worldwide data, leave common_geo blank. Regional breakdown (interest_by_region) is most detailed when a specific country (e.g. US, GB, DE) is chosen.
3. Multi-Keyword Comparison: When using interest_over_time or interest_by_region, providing 2 to 5 keywords gives you directly normalized comparison scores on the same 0–100 scale.
4. Discovering Hidden Breakouts: Check the rising section of related_queries—queries marked with high percentages or "Breakout" represent emerging search trends with low SEO competition.
5. 1-Click Tabular Rows vs. Fast API: Need clean rows ready for instant Excel, CSV, or Google Sheets export? Set output_format: "flat". If you are looking for an ultra-fast REST API specifically designed for AI agents and webhooks, check out our companion actor: Google Trends Fast API.

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🔌 MCP Server Setup: Claude Code, Cursor & AI Agents

Connect this scraper directly to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI agent via the hosted Apify MCP server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,unitbytes/google-trends-scraper"
    }
  }
}

No manual API token required in configuration if your client supports Apify OAuth sign-in. Alternatively, pass your Apify API Token in the authorization header.

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🤖 Ask an AI Assistant About This Scraper

Open a ready-to-run prompt about Google Trends Scraper in your favorite AI assistant:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does this compare to other Google Trends scrapers on Apify?
A: Most alternative scrapers only support 1 or 2 endpoints, charge a hidden $0.025 run-start fee on every single execution, or return complex nested JSON that breaks in spreadsheets. UnitBytes unifies all 5 endpoints in a single actor, provides 1-click Excel/CSV tabular exports, and charges virtually $0.00 to start.

Q: Can I automate daily or weekly trend monitoring on a schedule?
A: Yes! In the Apify Console, go to the Schedules tab to run your queries every morning or weekly. Because UnitBytes has no $0.025 start-fee penalty, running 100 automated scheduled jobs costs less than half a penny in startup fees.

Q: Do I need to buy or configure my own proxies?
A: No. High-speed residential proxies are integrated directly into the scraping engine at zero extra charge.

Q: What happens if Google returns a 429 rate-limit error?
A: The scraper handles rate limits automatically. It detects blocks, automatically switches proxy sessions, and seamlessly resumes extraction so your scraping jobs finish reliably without manual intervention.

Q: Is scraping Google Trends legal?
A: Yes. This actor extracts publicly available search statistics published by Google Trends. It does not access private account information.

Q: Can I export data to Excel or CSV?
A: Yes! Simply select output_format: "flat" in the input settings. When the run finishes, click Export → Excel or CSV in the Apify Console for clean, tabular columns with zero nested objects.

Q: How does billing work?
A: You are billed strictly per successful result extracted via Apify's Pay-Per-Event model (see the Pricing tab for current rates). You are never charged for actor runtime, proxy bandwidth, or failed requests.

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Keywords: Google Trends API, Google Trends scraper, Google Trends real-time, interest over time scraper, related queries extractor, Google Trends keyword research, SEO trend analysis, trending searches API, regional interest data, Apify Google Trends.

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💬 Enterprise Support & Custom Pipelines

Need custom web data feeds, high-frequency scheduled runs, private cluster deployments, or dedicated SLAs?

• 📧 Direct Email: contact@unitbytes.com
• 🌐 Enterprise Platform: https://unitbytes.com
• 💡 Data Engine Specs & Live Docs: https://unitbytes.com/actors/google-trends-api/