YouTube Video Scraper by Hashtag

Overview

This Apify Actor scrapes YouTube videos based on hashtags, keywords, or usernames. It extracts video metadata from search results, including titles, thumbnails, view counts, and URLs. The actor is designed for bulk processing and includes automatic proxy fallback to handle blocking.

Key Features

• Multiple Input Types: Scrape using hashtags (e.g., #chatgpt), plain keywords, or usernames.
• Bulk Processing: Run multiple hashtags or keywords in a single actor execution.
• Shorts Filtering: Optional toggle to scrape only YouTube Shorts.
• Proxy Fallback System: Automatically escalates through proxy options if blocked: no proxy → datacenter proxy → residential proxy.
• Pagination Handling: Uses continuation tokens to scrape beyond initial results.
• Duplicate Detection: Prevents duplicate videos in the output dataset.
• Detailed Logging: Real-time progress monitoring and proxy switch notifications.

Input Configuration

Configure the actor using a JSON input object. Here’s the structure:

{
  "hashtags": ["chatgpt", "Bangladesh"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "scrapeShortsOnly": false,
  "sortOrder": "relevance",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Input Fields:
- hashtags (required): Array of strings. Can include hashtags (#chatgpt), keywords (chatgpt), or usernames.
- maxResults (optional, default: 100): Number of videos to scrape per hashtag/keyword. Range: 1-1000.
- scrapeShortsOnly (optional, default: false): Set to true to scrape only YouTube Shorts.
- sortOrder (optional, default: "relevance"): Sort results by "relevance", "date", "viewCount", or "rating".
- proxyConfiguration (optional): By default, no proxy is used. The actor will automatically fall back to datacenter then residential proxies if requests are blocked.

Output

The actor outputs an array of video objects in JSON format.

Example Output Item:

{
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f2mRAGvKca8/hq720.jpg",
  "title": "How To Use ChatGPT in Bengali",
  "id": "f2mRAGvKca8",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2mRAGvKca8",
  "viewCount": 1224495,
  "type": "video",
  "hashtagCategoryData.categoryInfoText": "1.9M videos • 577K channels"
}

Output Fields:
- thumbnailUrl: URL for the video's thumbnail image.
- title: The video title.
- id: YouTube's unique video ID.
- url: Full watch URL for the video.
- viewCount: View count as an integer.
- type: Either "video" or "shorts".
- hashtagCategoryData.categoryInfoText: Category info text from YouTube's UI.

How to Use (Apify Console)

1. Log in at https://console.apify.com and navigate to Actors.
2. Find the youtube-video-scraper-by-hashtag actor and select it.
3. In the Input tab, configure your settings using the JSON structure above.
4. Run the actor.
5. Monitor execution logs in real-time to see scraping progress and any proxy fallback events.
6. Once finished, access the scraped data in the Dataset tab.
7. Export results as JSON, CSV, or other supported formats.

Common Use Cases

• Content & Trend Research: Discover trending videos for specific hashtags or topics.
• Competitor Monitoring: Track videos from targeted keywords or channels.
• Data Aggregation: Collect video metadata for analysis or machine learning projects.
• SEO & Performance Analysis: Gather view counts and engagement data by topic.

Notes & Limitations

• The actor scrapes video metadata only. It does not scrape comments, likes, or descriptions.
• It cannot access private or unlisted videos.
• The maxResults limit is applied per hashtag/keyword in the input array.
• If YouTube blocks a request, the actor will retry up to 3 times with the next proxy tier in the fallback sequence.