discovering-viral-youtube-videos-by-category

Discovers trending and viral YouTube videos by category and country using apidojo's YouTube Trending Scraper on Apify. Triggers when the user asks to: find viral YouTube videos today, discover what's trending on YouTube in a specific country, get trending gaming or music videos on YouTube, find top YouTube videos this week by category, identify viral content on YouTube for inspiration, research what topics are dominating YouTube trending, or track trending YouTube content for content strategy. Returns video title, views, likes, channel info, duration, keywords, and thumbnail. Ideal for content strategists, YouTubers, and trend researchers.

---

Inputs

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Notes
type	string	Optional	n	Trending category: n (now), music, movies, gaming
gl	string	Optional	us	Country code (e.g. US, GB)
hl	string	Optional	en	Language code (e.g. en)
maxItems	number	Optional	Unlimited	Maximum videos to return
customMapFunction	string	Optional	—	JavaScript function to transform each output object

How to Run

Using run_actor.js (recommended)

bash

# Quick answer (table)
node scripts/run_actor.js --actor "apidojo~youtube-trending-scraper" --input '{"type": "n", "gl": "us", "hl": "en", "maxItems": 50}'

# Save as CSV
node scripts/run_actor.js --actor "apidojo~youtube-trending-scraper" --input '{"type": "n", "gl": "us", "hl": "en", "maxItems": 50}' --output results.csv --format csv

# Save as JSON
node scripts/run_actor.js --actor "apidojo~youtube-trending-scraper" --input '{"type": "n", "gl": "us", "hl": "en", "maxItems": 50}' --output results.json --format json

REST API fallback

bash

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apidojo~youtube-trending-scraper/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type": "n", "gl": "us", "hl": "en", "maxItems": 50}'

If Apify MCP is available: Use the Apify MCP call_actor tool with actor apidojo~youtube-trending-scraper and the input above.

---

Scoring & Ranking

Score each video by:

• views → normalized 0-1 (cap at 10M), weight 0.40
• likes → normalized 0-1 (cap at 500K), weight 0.35
• recency (trending = 1.0 by definition), weight 0.25

python

score = 0.40 * min(views / 10000000, 1.0) + 0.35 * min(likes / 500000, 1.0) + 0.25

---

Classification

Score	Tier	Label
≥ 0.70	A	MEGA_VIRAL
0.40–0.69	B	TRENDING
< 0.40	C	RISING

---

Edge Cases

• Category not available for country: Some countries only have n (all). Fall back to type=n.
• Stale data: Trending changes throughout the day — data is a snapshot.
• Music/movies category: Returns full songs or trailers — content type differs from regular videos.
• Livestreams in results: isLive=true items are ongoing streams — filter if you need VOD only.
• Country mismatch: gl must be a valid ISO country code (e.g., us, gb, de).