Google Trends Scraper — Unlimited Keywords, Trending Now & Spike Alerts

Extract Google Trends data at scale: interest over time, interest by region, related queries (top and rising) and Trending Now searches. Compare any number of keywords on one scale, run several countries in one go, and get spike detection on every timeline. It's built to keep working when Google rate-limits.

What makes this Google Trends scraper different

• Unlimited keywords, still comparable. Google Trends compares at most 5 search terms at a time, so numbers from separate requests can't be compared. This Actor splits your list into batches that share one anchor keyword, then rescales every batch onto the anchor. 30 brands, 50 products or 100 topics come back as one chart-ready dataset.
• Designed for reliability. Rate limits (HTTP 429) are retried with exponential backoff and jitter. The session is refreshed, and the proxy escalates automatically from datacenter to residential only when Google starts blocking, so you pay for residential only when needed. If one batch fails, you still get every batch that worked, plus a clear status message saying what went wrong.
• Trending Now, complete. The full list trends.google.com/trending shows for a country (often hundreds; 1,000+ over 7 days), not just the top 10–20 of the RSS feed: search volume, % increase, when it started, whether it's still active, related searches, categories and, for the top trends, the news stories behind them. Windows: 4 h, 24 h, 48 h, 7 days. Filter by category or keep only active trends. One country's whole list is one result.
• Spike & breakout detection built in. Every timeline includes stats: latest value, peak, mean, z-score of the latest point against history, 7-period momentum and a breakout flag. Schedule the Actor daily and alert on breakout: true without writing any code. Partial (still-filling) periods are excluded so the latest value isn't misleadingly low.
• Paste a Trends URL or a Google Sheet. Copy any Explore or Trending Now page URL from trends.google.com and get exactly that comparison as data (terms, region, time range, category, YouTube/News/Shopping). Or keep your keyword list in a Google Sheet and link it: no copy-pasting 100 keywords into a form.
• Multi-country in one run. Pass ["US", "GB", "DE", "US-CA"] to fetch every region with the same settings.
• States, cities or metro areas. Interest by area at state/region level, by city (with coordinates), or by US metro area (DMA, the unit TV and local ad buyers use).
• Topics, not just search terms. Use Google's topic IDs (e.g. /m/02vqfm = Coffee, the drink) for cleaner comparisons than raw search terms; results carry the readable keywordLabel. Topic URLs from trends.google.com work too.
• A plain answer for dashboards and AI agents: every timeline's stats.direction is rising, falling or stable.
• One result per keyword: everything included. Timeline, spike stats, regions and related queries for a keyword in one region are one result ($0.001 on Apify's Starter plan), with no start fee and no compute or proxy fees: you pay per result, nothing else. Spreadsheet users can switch to flat (one row per data point) at the same price: billing is per keyword and region, never per row.

Use cases

• SEO & content teams: find rising queries ("Breakout" = +5000%), compare topic demand, and plan content around seasonality.
• E-commerce & product research: compare product demand across countries and catch seasonal peaks early.
• Brand monitoring: track your brand against competitors daily and alert on spikes.
• Market & finance research: use search interest as an alternative-data signal across dozens of tickers or products on one scale.
• Journalism & newsrooms: pull Trending Now with linked news stories every hour.
• AI agents: callable through Apify's MCP server and API, with structured JSON output and per-result pricing.

How to use it

1. Choose a mode: explore (your keywords) or trending_now (what's trending, no keywords needed).
2. Add keywords, any number, or paste Google Trends URLs, or link a keyword sheet (Google Sheet shared as "Anyone with the link", or any CSV URL; first column, header row optional). Optionally choose the anchor keyword (default: the first one). Pick a term with steady, non-zero interest, such as a large brand in your niche.
3. Add countries/regions (US, GB, US-CA, …), or leave empty for worldwide.
4. Pick a timeframe: now 7-d, today 1-m, today 3-m, today 12-m, today 5-y, all, or an explicit range such as 2025-01-01 2025-12-31.
5. Choose the data to include: time, region, related_queries.
6. Run, or schedule it (daily or hourly) and connect a webhook, Slack, Google Sheets or Make/Zapier integration for alerts.

Input example

{
  "mode": "explore",
  "keywords": ["chatgpt", "claude", "gemini", "copilot", "perplexity", "grok"],
  "anchor": "chatgpt",
  "geos": ["US", "GB"],
  "timeframe": "today 3-m",
  "include": ["time", "region", "related_queries"]
}

Or straight from the browser and a sheet:

{
  "trendsUrls": ["https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=coffee,tea,matcha"],
  "keywordsSheetUrl": "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/YOUR_SHEET_ID/edit#gid=0",
  "geos": ["US"]
}

Each Trends URL runs as its own job with that page's settings; sheet keywords join the keywords list and use the form's settings.

Output example (compact)

{
  "type": "keyword_trends",
  "keyword": "claude",
  "geo": "US",
  "timeframe": "today 3-m",
  "scaledToAnchor": "chatgpt",
  "stats": {"latest": 17, "peak": 24, "mean": 15.2, "zscoreLatest": 0.9, "momentumPct": 6.3, "direction": "stable", "breakout": false},
  "timeline": [{"time": 1783641600, "date": "Jul 10, 2026", "value": 23, "hasData": true, "isPartial": false}],
  "regions": [{"geoCode": "US-CA", "geoName": "California", "value": 100, "hasData": true}],
  "relatedQueries": {"top": [{"query": "claude ai", "value": 100}], "rising": [{"query": "claude code", "formattedValue": "Breakout"}]}
}

Trending Now (compact): one result per country with the whole list. Real output, trimmed:

{
 "type": "trending_now_list",
 "geo": "US",
 "hours": 24,
 "count": 100,
 "trends": [
  {
   "type": "trending_now",
   "geo": "US",
   "query": "barcelona vs getafe",
   "startedAt": "2026-10-10T13:00:00+00:00",
   "endedAt": null,
   "active": true,
   "searchVolume": 200000,
   "increasePercent": 1000,
   "relatedSearches": [
    "barcelona - getafe",
    "barcelona vs",
    "barcelona fc",
    "..."
   ],
   "categories": [
    "Sports"
   ]
  },
  "..."
 ]
}

With outputFormat: "flat", each trend is its own row (type: "trending_now").

Pricing

Pay-per-result, with no start fee and no monthly rental.

Job	Results	Cost
3 keywords, everything (timeline + regions + related queries), 1 country	3	$0.003
20 keywords on one scale, 1 country	20	$0.02
6 keywords × 5 countries, everything	30	$0.03
Trending Now, 10 countries (full lists, however long)	10	$0.01

Costs above are at the Starter-plan rate: $0.001 per result. Scale: $0.00075. Business and up: $0.0005. Apify free plan: $0.0015. A result is one keyword in one region (everything included) or one country's whole Trending Now list, in compact or flat output. No compute, proxy or start fees on top: the price per result is the whole price.

Apify's free plan includes monthly credits, enough for thousands of results.

FAQ

Why do values change when I add more keywords? Google Trends scales every request to 0–100, relative to the highest point among the terms you compare. Adding a more popular term lowers the others. With anchor rescaling, all batches share the anchor's scale.

Why can values exceed 100? After rescaling, a keyword from a later batch can be more popular than everything in the first batch. It is expressed on the first batch's scale, so it can go above 100. That's expected and keeps all keywords comparable.

What does "<1" or 0 mean? Very low search interest. Google reports it as 0 or "<1". Low-volume terms in small regions are noisy, so prefer larger regions or longer timeframes.

Is the data sampled? Yes. Google computes Trends from a sample of searches, so values for small terms can shift from one day to the next. For research, aggregate over longer timeframes or compare repeated scheduled runs.

Do I need a proxy? No. The Actor escalates automatically. For very large or frequent jobs, select the RESIDENTIAL proxy group for the fewest retries.

Can AI agents use it? Yes, through Apify's API and MCP server. Inputs are documented and outputs are structured JSON; read stats.direction and stats.breakout for a direct answer instead of parsing timelines.

Related topics? Google no longer returns related topics for search terms or topic IDs (we checked again in October 2026), so this Actor doesn't list them. Related queries (top and rising) are included.

City or metro data is empty for my keyword? Small terms often have too little data at city level. Try region level or a longer timeframe.

Limits and notes

• Google Trends data is relative search interest, not absolute search volume.
• Data comes from Google Trends' public web interface (the same data trends.google.com shows) and its public Trending Now feed. Use it in line with Google's terms and the laws that apply to you. This Actor is not affiliated with Google.
• Found a bug or need a feature? Open an issue on the Issues tab. We aim to respond within 24 hours.