YouTube Video Scraper

A professional Apify Actor for scraping YouTube video metadata with advanced filtering. It's built for scalable, automated data extraction from YouTube search results.

Overview

This actor performs searches on YouTube and returns structured data for each video. You can filter results by upload date, duration, and sort order, and target specific countries. It handles multiple keywords and supports all languages.

Key Features

• Advanced Filters: Narrow results by upload date (hour, today, week, month, year), duration (short, medium, long), and sort order (relevance, date, viewCount, rating).
• Comprehensive Data: Extracts titles, full descriptions, view/like/comment counts, channel info (name, subscribers), thumbnails, upload time, tags, and video URLs.
• Targeted Scraping: Option to include or exclude YouTube Shorts and to specify a country/region code (e.g., US, JP, GB) for localized results.
• Bulk & Multi-Language: Process multiple search keywords simultaneously, extracting up to 100 videos per search. Works with keywords in any language.
• Optimized Performance: Uses smart browser management, parallel processing, and request optimization for reliable, efficient scraping.

How to Use

On Apify Platform

1. Go to the actor on the Apify Store.
2. Click "Try for free".
3. Enter your search keywords in the input configuration.
4. Set any desired filters (optional).
5. Click "Start". Download results in JSON, CSV, or other formats when complete.

Input Configuration

Configure the actor using a JSON input. Here are the main parameters:

{
  "searches": ["search term 1", "search term 2"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "maxPerSearch": 50,
  "uploadDate": "month",
  "duration": "medium",
  "sortBy": "viewCount",
  "country": "US",
  "includeShorts": false
}

• searches: (Required) Array of search keyword strings.
• maxResults: Total maximum videos to scrape across all searches.
• maxPerSearch: Max videos to scrape per individual search (10-100).
• uploadDate: Filter by upload time: any, hour, today, week, month, year.
• duration: Filter by length: any, short (<4 min), medium (4-20 min), long (>20 min).
• sortBy: Result order: relevance, date, viewCount, rating.
• country: Two-letter region code for localized results (e.g., US, GB, JP).
• includeShorts: Set to true to include YouTube Shorts in results.

Input & Output

Input

The actor requires the searches array. All other fields are optional filters to refine the results.

Output

The dataset contains individual items, each representing one video with the following structure:

{
  "title": "Video Title Example",
  "videoId": "abc123def",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123def",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123def/maxresdefault.jpg",
  "duration": "10:25",
  "viewCount": "245000",
  "uploadTime": "3 weeks ago",
  "channelName": "Example Channel",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/c/examplechannel",
  "description": "Short description...",
  "fullDescription": "The complete video description text.",
  "searchKeyword": "search term 1",
  "isShort": false,
  "isLive": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:30:00Z"
}

Each item includes video metadata, channel details, and the search keyword that produced it.

Use Cases

• Market & Competitor Research: Track trending topics and analyze competitor video content and engagement.
• Content & SEO Strategy: Find content ideas, research keywords, and track performance metrics.
• Academic Research: Collect datasets for studies on social media or video platforms.
• Business Intelligence: Monitor brand mentions and industry-related videos.