mcp-server-searchapi

An MCP server for SearchApi — Google web, news, scholar, and YouTube search as clean, agent-ready MCP tools.

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Features

• 4 search tools — web, news, Google Scholar, and YouTube.
• Normalized output — slimmed, consistent JSON tuned for LLM consumption (no raw SearchApi noise).
• Bearer auth — single SEARCHAPI_API_KEY env var; no extra config.
• Retry / backoff — automatic retry on 429 and 5xx with exponential backoff.
• stdio transport — plugs directly into any MCP-compatible host.
• Zero-config run — npx mcp-server-searchapi with no installation step.

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Tools

Tool	Searches	Key params
web_search	Google organic results	query (required), gl, hl, location, page
news_search	Google News	query (required), time_period (last_day | last_week | last_month | last_year), gl, hl
scholar_search	Google Scholar	query (required), page, year_from
youtube_search	YouTube	query (required), gl, hl

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Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18
• A SearchApi API key (free tier available)

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Install & run

SEARCHAPI_API_KEY=your_key npx mcp-server-searchapi

No installation required. npx downloads and runs the server on the fly.

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Use with Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Add the following block to your MCP configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop, or .claude/settings.json for Claude Code):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-server-searchapi"],
      "env": { "SEARCHAPI_API_KEY": "your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

Once configured, Claude can call web_search, news_search, scholar_search, and youtube_search directly.

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Example

Example web_search response (illustrative):

{
  "results": [
    {
      "position": 1,
      "title": "Model Context Protocol",
      "link": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io",
      "source": "modelcontextprotocol.io",
      "snippet": "An open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to large language models."
    }
  ],
  "related_searches": ["mcp server", "mcp tools"]
}

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Tool reference

web_search

Search Google via SearchApi. Returns organic results plus optional answer box, knowledge graph summary, and related searches.

Param	Type	Description
query	string (required)	The search query.
gl	string	Country code, e.g. "us", "tw" (default: "us").
hl	string	Interface language, e.g. "en" (default: "en").
location	string	Geographic location for the search.
page	integer	Results page number (default: 1). Google returns 10 results per page; use page to paginate — there is no num param.

Returns: { results: [{position, title, link, source?, snippet?, date?}], answer?, knowledge?, related_searches? }

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news_search

Search Google News via SearchApi. Returns recent articles with title, link, source, date, and snippet.

Param	Type	Description
query	string (required)	The news search query.
time_period	string	Restrict to a time window: last_day, last_week, last_month, or last_year.
gl	string	Country code, e.g. "us".
hl	string	Interface language, e.g. "en".

Returns: { results: [{title, link, source?, date?, snippet?, thumbnail?}] }

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scholar_search

Search Google Scholar via SearchApi. Returns academic results with title, link, authors, publication info, citation count, and snippet.

Param	Type	Description
query	string (required)	The scholarly search query.
page	integer	Results page number (default: 1).
year_from	integer	Only return results published from this year onward.

Returns: { results: [{title, link, authors?, publication?, cited_by?, snippet?}] }

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youtube_search

Search YouTube via SearchApi. Returns videos with title, link, channel, view count, publish time, and duration.

Param	Type	Description
query	string (required)	The YouTube search query.
gl	string	Country code, e.g. "us".
hl	string	Interface language, e.g. "en".

Returns: { results: [{title, link, channel?, views?, published?, length?, description?}] }

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Extending

The client in src/searchapi-client.ts is engine-agnostic — it accepts any engine name that SearchApi supports. Adding support for another engine (maps, flights, patents, shopping, and 20+ others) is a single new file: create src/tools/<engine>.ts, map the tool's input params to SearchApi query params, add a normalize helper in src/normalize.ts, and register the tool in src/tools/index.ts. No changes to the client or server wiring are required.

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Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run unit tests (offline — no API key needed; fixtures are bundled)
npm test

# Build for distribution
npm run build

The unit tests run fully offline using fixture files in test/fixtures/. A separate live integration test (test/live.test.ts) exercises the real SearchApi endpoint — it runs automatically as part of npm test but is skipped unless SEARCHAPI_API_KEY is set:

SEARCHAPI_API_KEY=your_key npm test

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.