Exploring Workarounds and Alternatives to the Google Trends API

Dealing with third-party APIs can be a very general attemp.
It seems like users are having a hard time navigating these tools.

  • API calls are failing unexpectedly
  • Unexplained gaps appear in data results
  • Hitting request limits too easily
  • Unpredictable results and data

Adding to the complexity, most of these tools lack official documentation or support.
(That’s because, again, these aren’t official APIs.)

Why Doesn’t Google Trends Have An API?

Google has not explicitly stated the reasons for not having an API for Google Trends, but it is unlikely to be developed in the near future.

Here are some possible reasons why Google Trends doesn’t offer an API:

Insufficient Demand: Google has a substantial backlog of product and feature enhancements, and creating a Google Trends API may not be a current priority.

  • Intellectual Property Protection:: Google Trends utilizes proprietary algorithms to analyze search and interest data. Introducing a public API could potentially compromise these algorithms.
  • Privacy Concerns:: Google deals with sensitive personal information in its data. Opening an API for Google Trends could risk exposing private data through millions of API calls.
  • Free Service: Google Trends is a free service, and providing an API to businesses could incentivize them to sell the data, which might not align with Google’s goals
  • Complexity: Google Trends not only stores search data but also normalizes it by time and location to enable region and time filtering. Additionally, Google must filter and verify data to combat spam.

What Are Some Alternative Options?

Use a Third-Party Scraper API

All of these tool claims to be the “Unofficial Google Trend API.”
Originally, they are simply scraping Google Trends.

What is scraping?

Web scraping involves using automated bots to fetch content and data from websites. This information can then be stored or presented elsewhere.
As an illustration, PyTrends is a Python library available as open-source, offering its own set of functions to interact with Google Trends data.
Throughout this process, you’re not directly using the Google Trends API (as it doesn’t exist). Instead, you’re establishing a connection to Google and using Python to construct a payload, fetch it, and execute queries against it.

Drawbacks of using a 3rd party Google Trends scraper include:

  • Scraping can be resource-intensive, requiring bots to constantly retrieve data from websites, potentially leading to performance issues.
  • The quality of data from scraping APIs can be questionable, as it involves handling large volumes of results and data points, which increases the likelihood of errors or missing information.
  • Scraping APIs are error-prone because they are not officially associated with Google, so there is no built-in support for issues that may arise from changes made by Google.
  • While scraping is not illegal, scrapers must be cautious about how they market their products to avoid violating terms of service agreements.

Overall, scraping tools do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or legality of the data they collect.

Use a SERP Tracker API

SERP trackers crawl search engine result pages to find keywords, capture search results, and analyze competitor performance.
Many of these tools have APIs that let you leverage SERP data programmatically.
Unlike scrapers, they tend to use a combination of proprietary data and third-party search sources.
Since some of these brands are more established, you’re likely to find a better experience than from a Google Trends scraper. Their APIs are well-documented and supported as well.

Common SERP APIs

  • Semrush API- a very popular keyword research tool used by thousands of marketers. You can use its API to retrieve search results and volume for keywords.
  • SerpWow: a search engine crawler that lets you retrieve search results and trend data from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Amazon, and others.
  • Smartproxy – another SERP API that gives you the ability to query search results from a variety of sources. You can also use a global proxy to search based on location.

Each of these tools has well-documented APIs.

Downsides of a SERP API

Like Google Trends and third-party scrapers, you’ve got to know what you’re looking for. So if you’re not sure which keywords are trending, you’ll be spending a while researching the right topic.
These tools can also get expensive since some of them charge based on usage.
Finally, search engines may block providers from crawling their websites, or retrieve different or limited results.

Google Trends Use Cases

What could you do with an API that pulls in trend data?

  • Keyword Research: Google Trends aids in investigating a keyword’s search volume by region over time, along with displaying related topics and long-tail queries.
  • Product Trends Analysis: For online sellers, Google Trends can assist in determining which products to stock based on trend data.
  • Monitor Competitive Brands: The comparison feature allows you to compare search volume between your brand and a competitor, identifying regions where you may be trailing and discovering new opportunities.
  • Content Ideation: Content creators can draw inspiration from trending topics.

An Google Trends API would accelerate time-to-value across all these use cases. And allow users to integrate Google Trends data into their existing tech stack.

The best part of using the Exploding Topics API is that our trend data comes to you. Don’t have a topic or product in mind? That’s fine. Query our topics by the minute to find new, fast-growing topics.

In Summary:

No, there isn’t an API for Google Trends – just workarounds. You can leverage these workarounds, but beware: there are always downsides to working with third-party APIs and scrapers.