Apify Google Trends actors, and where they stop

Apify does not ship a Google Trends API. It ships actors. The first-party listing is apify/google-trends-scraper. A caller starts a run with ApifyClient, passes search terms or a Trends URL, waits, and reads a dataset. That is a scrape job. Trends API is a POST with mode, source, and keyword. No run id. Request shape is on the API reference.

An actor run is not a Trends mode

Apify's platform API manages actors, schedules, and datasets. The Trends shape lives inside one actor's input JSON. Change actors and the fields change. searchTerms on the official actor is not keyword on Trends API. A warehouse that stores source cannot treat an actor input as a source.

Community listings add more shapes. Some expose interest_over_time as a mode flag. Some scrape only Trending Now. None of those flags are Trends API mode values. Copying an actor name into source is a 400.

What the official actor is for

The official actor page describes interest by subregion, interest over time, related queries, and related topics. Location, time range, and category are filters on a Google page. Success rate and user counts on the store page change. Recheck the listing.

That job is Explore. It is not get_top_trends with type Amazon Best Sellers and a category. Apify can scrape Amazon on a different actor. That is a second contract.

Community actors multiply the contract

Store search returns several Google Trends scrapers. Ratings, inputs, and pricing differ. Some charge per result. Some burn compute units. There is no shared body string to parse.

Trends API has one envelope. statusCode plus a JSON body string. Parse the string. Google history uses source google search. The live Google board uses type Google Trends. Field names versus an actor input sit on Trends API vs Apify.

{
  "mode": "get_top_trends",
  "type": "Google Trends",
  "limit": 10
}

No keyword. No actor id. Same key as YouTube or Steam.

When a scrape job is the wrong primitive

Keep Apify when the team already orchestrates actors and needs a periodic Explore dump. Leave when the on-call rotation should not include "the actor version broke." A managed SERP zone is a different stop: Bright Data. A renderer that takes a Trends URL is ScrapingBee.