Google News Scraper Actor Collect real-time Google News Search, Top Stories, and Topic feeds with localized filtering, infinite scroll coverage, and optional redirect unwrapping for clean publisher URLs. ## Why teams pick this actor - Rank-ready coverage – Mirrors the long-form, marketing-first READMEs of top marketplace actors while focusing on actionable data (headlines, snippets, publishers, timestamps, thumbnails, canonical URLs). - 3 capture modes – SEARCH for keyword monitoring, TOP_STORIES for country/region dashboards, TOPIC (incl. hashed topic IDs) for the curated Google News sections journalists rely on. - Localization first – Every run requires an explicit language like en-US or de-DE, so you can mirror the behavior of your target newsroom or SEO locale. - Stateful infinite scroll – Playwright + Chrome scrolls until maxItems, deduplicates via persistent state, and survives platform migrations without repeating articles. - Redirect intelligence – Toggle resolveRedirects to unwrap news.google.com links via HTTP first, then fall back to a headless browser for stubborn publishers. - Operator friendly – Resource throttling (blocked assets, batching, optional proxy pools) keeps compute predictable, so you can undercut $20/month competitors while still monetizing premium options. ## Perfect for - Trend and sentiment tracking dashboards - Competitive/brand monitoring in multiple languages - Feeding LLM/RAG pipelines with fresh, normalized news snippets - SEO teams mapping content velocity or backlink opportunities - Research teams exporting CSV/JSON data into BI tools ## Data you get | Field | Description | | --- | --- | | title | Headline as displayed on Google News | | source | Publisher name extracted from the card | | publishedAt | ISO timestamp normalized from relative strings (e.g., “3 hours ago”) | | originalUrl | Google News redirect URL (always present) | | finalUrl | Set when resolveRedirects=true; points at the publisher site | | thumbnailUrl | Image from the article card, when available | | snippet | Reserved for future excerpt support | ## Modes & localization cheatsheet | Mode | When to use | URL that gets crawled | | --- | --- | --- | | SEARCH | Keyword monitoring, advanced query operators | https://news.google.com/search?q={query} | | TOP_STORIES | Country-level front page | https://news.google.com/topstories | | TOPIC | Curated sections & hashed topics | Either https://news.google.com/topics/{topicId} or a fallback search | Topic IDs & sections 1. Open the desired topic/section on news.google.com. 2. Copy the hashed ID from the URL (e.g., CAAqJggKIiBDQkFTRWdvSUwyMHZNRGRqTVhZU0FtVnVHZ0pWVXlnQVAB). 3. Pass it in query when mode="TOPIC" to lock the crawler to that curated feed. ## Input parameters | Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | mode | 'SEARCH' | 'TOP_STORIES' | 'TOPIC' | No | SEARCH | Controls which Google News surface we crawl | | query | string | SEARCH / custom TOPIC | – | Keywords or hashed topic IDs | | language | ll-CC | Yes | en-US | Drives hl, gl, and ceid params; always set it (best practice from Apify leaderboard actors) | | resolveRedirects | boolean | No | false | Adds an HTTP + optional browser hop per article to unwrap publisher URLs | | maxItems | number | No | 100 | Hard stop for infinite scroll + dataset pushes | | proxyConfiguration | object | No | Apify auto | Pass your proxy group or custom proxy URL | ## Advanced search operators - Exact match: "artificial intelligence" - Source filter: site:reuters.com "earnings" - Title only: intitle:"climate" - Exclusions: tesla -stock - Date bounds: after:2024-01-01 before:2024-06-30 Combine operators to reproduce the saved searches marketing teams monitor daily. ## Quick start 1. Add the actor from the Apify Store and click “Try for free”. 2. Choose the mode (SEARCH, TOP_STORIES, TOPIC) and fill in language (e.g., en-GB). 3. Paste your keywords or topic IDs; bump maxItems if you need deeper coverage. 4. Optional: enable resolveRedirects for canonical publisher URLs. 5. Run & download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or stream it via the Apify API. ## Output example json { "title": "OpenAI ships GPT-Next", "source": "TechCrunch", "publishedAt": "2025-11-25T14:30:00.000Z", "originalUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiYmh0dHBzOi8vbmV3cy5nb29nbGUuY29tLy4uLg", "finalUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/25/openai-gpt-next", "thumbnailUrl": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/..." } ### Dataset schema | Field | Type | Example | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | title | string | "Tesla unveils new Model" | Headline pulled from the card | | source | string | "Reuters" | Publisher label | | publishedAt | string (ISO-8601) | "2025-11-25T14:30:00.000Z" | Normalized by parseGoogleDate | | originalUrl | string | "https://news.google.com/..." | Always present, Google redirect | | finalUrl | string | "https://www.reuters.com/..." | Only populated when resolveRedirects=true or when Google already links directly | | thumbnailUrl | string | "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/..." | Optional image URL | | snippet | string | null | Reserved for future excerpt extraction | Every dataset item is stored in the default Apify Dataset, so you can download JSON/CSV/Excel or stream via the Dataset API. ## Cost & performance tips - Redirect resolution is the main price lever. Keep it off for cheaper monitoring runs and upsell it as a premium add-on when clients need canonical URLs. - Because the crawler blocks images/fonts and reuses sessions, SEARCH mode can pull ~100 results on the default memory tier. Increase the run memory only when maxItems is very high. - Persistent state (STATE key-value store) prevents duplicates if the run migrates, so re-runs won’t waste your monthly budget. ## Need help? Open an issue in the Apify actor console or ping us with your run ID. We actively benchmark against the highest-ranking Google News actors (e.g., api-empire/google-news-scraper at $19.99/month) to keep this README—and the crawler—competitive.