Apify Google News API

Google News API: Headlines to Structured JSON

Search Google News through an API and get clean JSON back. Give it a query, and it returns news articles with title, link, source, snippet, ranking position, and a relative publication date, plus search metadata for pagination and result counts.

When to use this skill

• The user wants a Google News API: query in, structured articles out.
• They want to scrape Google News headlines for a topic, brand, company, or market.
• They want Google News results exported to JSON, CSV, a sheet, or a database.
• They ask for a "google news scraper", "google news scraping", or "news search API".

Not for: full article text (the Actor returns title, snippet, link, source, and date, not the article body), recurring brand watchlists (use the news-monitoring skill), or general web search results (use a web search Actor).

What you get (one dataset item per page)

Each results page is one dataset item:

• news_results: the articles on that page, each with position, title, link, source, snippet, date (relative, such as "2 hours ago")
• search_metadata: total_results, news_count, pages_processed, max_pages_set, pagination_limit_reached
• search_information: query_displayed, news_results_state
• search_parameters (your input echoed back), search_timestamp, page_number

Flatten news_results across items to get one row per article. About 10 articles per page.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/GoogleNewsAPI?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Actor ID: johnvc/GoogleNewsAPI
• Pricing: pay per page of results processed, plus a small per-run setup fee (see references/gotchas.md).

Run it with the Apify CLI

Search news for a topic, one page:

apify actors call "johnvc/GoogleNewsAPI" -i '{"q":"electric vehicles","max_pages":1}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-news-api \
  2>/dev/null

Localized search with duplicates filtered, up to three pages:

apify actors call "johnvc/GoogleNewsAPI" -i '{"q":"semiconductor exports","gl":"uk","hl":"en","google_domain":"google.co.uk","filter":"1","max_pages":3}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-news-api \
  2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json, --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-news-api, and 2>/dev/null.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/GoogleNewsAPI

Then ask, for example: "Search Google News for lithium battery recalls and give me the headlines with sources and links." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Build the query. q is the only required field: a topic, brand, company, or phrase. Quote exact phrases inside the query when precision matters.
2. Bound the volume. Set max_pages explicitly (default 1, about 10 articles per page). Never pass max_pages: 0 without a deliberate decision: 0 fetches every available page.
3. Localize when needed. Combine location (city or region string), gl (country code), hl (base language code), and google_domain for non-US markets.
4. Cut noise. filter: "1" drops duplicate coverage; nfpr: "1" blocks auto-corrected queries; safe: "active" filters explicit content.
5. Estimate cost, then confirm with the user if the run is large. See references/gotchas.md.
6. Run the Actor and read the dataset. Flatten news_results into one row per article, dedupe on link, and deliver as JSON or CSV.

Inputs

• q (string, required): search query
• location (string): geographic focus, such as "Austin, TX, Texas, United States"
• google_domain (string, default google.com)
• gl (enum): country code, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 lowercase
• hl (enum): language code; use base codes such as en, es, fr
• lr (string): language restriction, such as lang_en
• safe (enum: active or off, default off)
• nfpr (enum string: "0" or "1"): exclude auto-corrected results
• filter (enum string: "0" or "1"): filter duplicate coverage
• max_pages (integer, default 1; 0 = all available pages)

Cost

Billing is a small per-run setup fee plus a per-page fee, about 10 articles per page. A one-page run costs a few cents; a ten-page run stays near a dime. Estimate first and confirm large runs; live prices and thresholds are in references/gotchas.md.

Honest limits

• No article body: you get title, snippet, link, source, and date. Fetch full text downstream from link if the task needs it.
• date is a relative string such as "1 day ago", so freshness filtering happens on your side after the run.
• One query per run; there is no batch query input.
• Inventory varies by topic and region; a page can return fewer than 10 articles.

Troubleshooting

• Empty dataset: broaden the query or drop the location; niche topics can have no Google News inventory. The setup fee is still charged.
• Fewer articles than expected: normal; Google returned fewer results for that query. Check search_metadata.total_results.
• Want more results: raise max_pages and check pagination_limit_reached in the metadata to see whether more pages existed.
• Language looks wrong: use base hl codes (en, not en-gb) and align gl plus google_domain with the market.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related news and search Actors

• Google Forums Search API, discussion threads on a topic: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-forums-search-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Google AI Overview API, how AI summarizes a query: https://apify.com/johnvc/Google-AI-Overview-API?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• DuckDuckGo SEO Scraper, general web results for the same query: https://apify.com/johnvc/DuckDuckGo-Scraper-for-serp-rankings?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo