YouTube Search Scraper

Overview

This Apify actor scrapes metadata from YouTube search results. You provide a search query, and it returns structured data for each video, including title, uploader, view count, and duration. It handles filtering, sorting, and uses proxies for reliable operation.

Key Features

• Extracts comprehensive video data: Title, video ID, URL, uploader, upload date, duration, view count, thumbnail, and Shorts status.
• Flexible search filters: Filter by Shorts (shorts_only, exclude_shorts), duration, upload date (last 24h, week, month, year), and sort by relevance, date, view count, or rating.
• Built for reliability: Uses Apify's proxies, includes configurable retry logic with exponential backoff, and has timeouts to prevent hangs.
• Multiple access points: Run via the Apify UI, CLI, API, or SDKs (Python, Node.js, etc.).
• Structured output: Results are stored in an Apify dataset and can be exported as JSON or CSV.

How to Use

Configure the actor using a JSON input. The only required field is the search query. You can run it directly on the Apify platform or integrate it into your code using the API.

Input Configuration

The actor accepts input with the following fields:

Notes:
* shorts_only and exclude_shorts cannot both be true.
* Increase sleep_interval or max_retries for large jobs or if you encounter errors.

Example Input:

{
  "query": "python tutorial",
  "max_results": 20,
  "exclude_shorts": true,
  "min_duration": 300,
  "upload_date_filter": "last_month",
  "sort_by": "view_count"
}

Output Format

Results are saved to an Apify dataset. Each item includes the following fields: title, video_id, url, uploader, uploader_id, upload_date (YYYYMMDD), duration (seconds), view_count, thumbnail, short (boolean), and an optional error field.

Example Output Item:

{
  "title": "Python Tutorial for Beginners",
  "video_id": "abc123",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123",
  "uploader": "CodingChannel",
  "uploader_id": "UC_xyz",
  "upload_date": "20231015",
  "duration": 1200,
  "view_count": 150000,
  "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/abc123/hqdefault.jpg",
  "short": false
}