Apify Google News Scraper

This skill should be used when the user asks to "scrape Google News", "get news articles", "search for news", "extract news data", "monitor news topics", "get latest headlines", or needs to collect news articles from Google News.

Google News Scraper with Apify

Search and extract news articles from Google News with full article content, enriched descriptions, and metadata. Supports region and language filtering.

Actor: futurizerush/google-news-scraper

Prerequisites

Set APIFY_API_TOKEN in environment. Get a token at console.apify.com/account/integrations.

Execution Flow

Apify runs are asynchronous. Every request follows 3 steps:

1. Start a run -- POST to the actor API, receive a run ID and dataset ID
2. Poll until done -- GET the run status, wait for SUCCEEDED
3. Fetch results -- GET the dataset items (returns a JSON array)

Typical run time: 30-90 seconds depending on query count and article enrichment.

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
searchQueries	array of strings	Yes	Search queries (e.g. ["AI"], ["climate change"])
region	string	No	Region code. Default: "us". Examples: "us", "tw", "jp"
language	string	No	Language code. Default: "en". Examples: "en", "zh-TW", "ja"
dateFilter	string	No	Time range: "1h", "1d", "1w", "1m", or "" (any time). Default: ""
maxResults	integer	No	Max articles per query. Default: 20. Min: 10

Complete Example (Python)

python

import requests, os, time

TOKEN = os.environ["APIFY_API_TOKEN"]
BASE = "https://api.apify.com/v2"

# Step 1: Start the run
response = requests.post(
    f"{BASE}/acts/futurizerush~google-news-scraper/runs?token={TOKEN}",
    json={
        "searchQueries": ["AI"],
        "region": "us",
        "language": "en",
        "dateFilter": "1d",
        "maxResults": 10,
    },
)
response.raise_for_status()
run = response.json()["data"]
run_id = run["id"]
dataset_id = run["defaultDatasetId"]

# Step 2: Poll until done
while True:
    status = requests.get(
        f"{BASE}/actor-runs/{run_id}?token={TOKEN}"
    ).json()["data"]["status"]
    if status == "SUCCEEDED":
        break
    if status in ("FAILED", "ABORTED", "TIMED-OUT"):
        raise RuntimeError(f"Run failed: {status}")
    time.sleep(5)

# Step 3: Fetch results (JSON array)
items = requests.get(
    f"{BASE}/datasets/{dataset_id}/items?token={TOKEN}"
).json()
for article in items:
    print(f"[{article['source']}] {article['title']}")
    print(f"  URL: {article['articleUrl']}")
    print(f"  Published: {article['pubDate']}")
    if article.get("enrichedDescription"):
        print(f"  Summary: {article['enrichedDescription'][:100]}")

Taiwan news in Chinese

python

requests.post(
    f"{BASE}/acts/futurizerush~google-news-scraper/runs?token={TOKEN}",
    json={
        "searchQueries": ["台灣"],
        "region": "tw",
        "language": "zh-TW",
        "dateFilter": "1d",
        "maxResults": 10,
    },
)

Multiple queries

python

requests.post(
    f"{BASE}/acts/futurizerush~google-news-scraper/runs?token={TOKEN}",
    json={
        "searchQueries": ["AI", "climate", "crypto"],
        "region": "us",
        "dateFilter": "1w",
        "maxResults": 10,
    },
)

Complete Example (bash)

bash

# Step 1: Start the run
RUN_RESPONSE=$(curl -s -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/futurizerush~google-news-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries": ["AI"], "region": "us", "language": "en", "dateFilter": "1d", "maxResults": 10}')

RUN_ID=$(echo "$RUN_RESPONSE" | jq -r '.data.id')
DATASET_ID=$(echo "$RUN_RESPONSE" | jq -r '.data.defaultDatasetId')

# Step 2: Poll until done
while true; do
  STATUS=$(curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/actor-runs/$RUN_ID?token=$APIFY_API_TOKEN" \
    | jq -r '.data.status')
  [ "$STATUS" = "SUCCEEDED" ] && break
  [ "$STATUS" = "FAILED" ] || [ "$STATUS" = "ABORTED" ] && echo "Failed: $STATUS" && exit 1
  sleep 5
done

# Step 3: Fetch results
curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/$DATASET_ID/items?token=$APIFY_API_TOKEN" | jq '.'

Output Format

Each item in the results array (field names verified from real API output on 2026-04-11):

json

{
  "title": "Vance, Bessent questioned tech giants on AI security...",
  "articleUrl": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/...",
  "googleNewsUrl": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/...",
  "pubDate": "Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:06:08 GMT",
  "timestamp": "2026-04-10T20:06:08.000Z",
  "source": "CNBC",
  "websiteName": "CNBC",
  "websiteUrl": "https://www.cnbc.com",
  "imageUrl": "https://image.cnbcfm.com/...",
  "description": "Raw RSS description with related headlines...",
  "enrichedDescription": "Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell separately met with...",
  "excerpt": "Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell separately met with...",
  "articleContent": {
    "content": "Full article text (truncated to ~2000 chars)...",
    "characterCount": 2000,
    "tokenCount": 325
  },
  "enrichmentTime": 9848,
  "guid": "unique-article-id",
  "searchQuery": "AI",
  "region": "us",
  "language": "en",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-11T06:06:59.618Z"
}

Note: Field names use camelCase. The articleContent object contains the full article text (up to ~2000 characters), character count, and token count. Use enrichedDescription or excerpt for summaries.

Error Handling

Error	Cause	Fix
401 Unauthorized	Invalid or missing API token	Check APIFY_API_TOKEN
invalid-input: "must be >= 10"	maxResults below minimum	Set maxResults to at least 10
No results	Query too specific or region has no news	Broaden the query or try a different region

Tips

• Use dateFilter: "1h" for real-time news monitoring and alerting.
• Use dateFilter: "1d" for daily news digests.
• articleContent.content provides the full article text (up to ~2000 chars) -- useful for summarization.
• enrichedDescription is a cleaner summary than description (which contains raw RSS data with related headlines).
• timestamp is ISO 8601 format, easier to parse than pubDate.
• Multiple search queries run in a single actor execution.
• No login or API key for Google News required.

Links

• Actor page
• Apify API docs