Search Google

Controlled node

Overview

Performs Google searches across multiple categories including Web, Images, News, Videos, Maps, Shopping, Scholar, and Patents. This node uses the Serper API to execute searches and returns structured results based on the selected search type. You can specify geographic location, language, and pagination to refine your search results.

Search Types

The node supports the following Google search categories:

Type	Description
Web	Standard Google web search results (organic results)
Images	Google Images search results
News	Google News search results
Videos	Google Video search results
Maps	Google Maps places and locations
Places	Google Places search results
Shopping	Google Shopping product results
Scholar	Google Scholar academic paper results
Patents	Google Patents search results
Autocomplete	Search suggestions/autocomplete results

Result Structure

The structure of the results output varies depending on the search type selected. Web searches return organic results with titles, URLs, and snippets, while Image searches return image URLs and metadata, etc.

Inputs

Input	Type	Description	Default
Run	Event	Fires the Google search	-
Query	Text	The search query string to execute	-
Type	Enum	The category of Google search to perform (Web, Images, News, etc.)	Web
GL	Text	Geographic location code (e.g., "us", "gb", "de") for localizing results	-
HL	Text	Language code (e.g., "en", "es", "de") for language-specific results	-
Page	Number	Page number for pagination (1-based)	1

Outputs

Output	Type	Description
Done	Event	Fires when the search has completed successfully or with an error
Results	Data	Array of search results. Structure varies by search type (see below)

Result Structures by Type

Web Search Results: Returns an array of objects containing:

• title: Page title
• link: URL
• snippet: Description/snippet
• position: Ranking position

Image Search Results: Returns an array of objects containing:

• imageUrl: Direct image URL
• link: Source page URL
• title: Image title
• source: Source website name

News Search Results: Returns an array of objects containing:

• title: Article title
• link: Article URL
• snippet: Article snippet
• date: Publication date
• source: News source

Runtime Behavior and Defaults

By default, the node performs a Web search (type: 'search') and returns the first page of results (page: 1).

The node will return an error object in the results output if:

• No query is provided
• The search API encounters an error
• Rate limits are exceeded

The gl (geographic location) and hl (language) parameters are optional but recommended for localized results. If not provided, Google will use default settings based on the server's location.

Example Usage

Here's a simple workflow that searches for "artificial intelligence" and processes the results:

1. Connect a Start node or Event node to the Run input of Search Google
2. Set the Query input to: artificial intelligence
3. Set Type to: Web (or leave as default)
4. Optionally set HL to: en for English results
5. Connect the Done event to trigger downstream processing
6. Connect the Results output to a node that processes the search results (e.g., an AI Write node to summarize the results, or a Loop node to iterate through individual results)

Advanced Example: To search for images on page 2 of results:

• Set Type to: Images
• Set Page to: 2
• Set Query to your image search term

The results can then be fed into an image processing workflow or downloaded using the Download File node.