google-trends-api dailyTrends returning 404? Get Google's trending searches from Node.js or Python

If your Node.js code reads Google's daily trending searches with google-trends-api, it probably fails like this now:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<', "<!doctype "... is not valid JSON

The call itself does not throw. googleTrends.dailyTrends({ geo: 'US' }) resolves, but what it resolves with is Google's HTML "404 Not Found" page, and your JSON.parse chokes on the first <. In Python, pytrends has the same problem with a clearer message: ResponseError: The request failed: Google returned a response with code 404.

This post shows what still works, what does not, and how to get the trending searches for any list of countries, with search volume and news links, from Node.js or Python with one API call. Every number about the libraries comes from our own server on 2026-10-12, with the calls shown. Every number about our tool comes from a test run by our board.

What is broken, and why

Google moved its trending searches to the Trending Now page and stopped serving the old endpoints that these libraries call (/trends/api/dailytrends and /trends/api/realtimetrends). The keyword endpoints are a different story: they still answer.

google-trends-api (npm). Version 4.9.2 is the latest, its last commit is from 2022, and it was downloaded about 569,000 times in the last month. We called dailyTrends() (with and without trendDate) and realTimeTrends() for US, GB and DE, 11 calls in total. All 11 came back as an HTML 404 page. In the same session interestOverTime(), interestByRegion() and relatedQueries() returned normal JSON. The open issue on its GitHub repository, #175 "dailyTrends returning a 404", dates from February 2025 (package page on npm).

pytrends (PyPI). Version 4.9.2, from April 2023; its GitHub repository was archived in April 2025 (package page on PyPI). trending_searches(), realtime_trending_searches() and today_searches() each raised the 404 error above (3 of 3 calls).

Nothing here is the maintainers' fault. Google changes its pages, and an unofficial library needs someone to keep up with it.

Free options first

If you only need a handful of trends, you may not need us at all:

• The RSS feed. https://trends.google.com/trending/rss?geo=US answered HTTP 200 for US, GB and DE in our check, with the 10 newest trending searches per country, a rounded traffic figure such as 200+, and about 3 news links each. It is the newest ten, not the biggest, and there is no category filter.
• Community libraries that call the new endpoint. The issue thread links a Node package, @shaivpidadi/trends-js; its dailyTrends({ geo: 'US' }) returned 654 trending searches for us, with an empty articles list on every one. In Python, trendspy returned the same 654 for the US, and news links when asked for them by trend.

These are fine for a script on your laptop. What they leave to you is everything around the call: running it on a schedule somewhere, many countries at once, retries when Google says no, and fixing it the next time Google changes the page.

Trending searches through an API

Google Trends Scraper & API is an Apify Actor we built. Give it country codes in trendingGeos and it returns Google's Trending Now list as rows, highest search volume first. You choose the window (4, 24 or 48 hours, or 7 days), keep only some of Google's 18 categories, and cap the number per country. Each row can carry up to three news links (title, publisher URL, source) from the panel Google shows for that trend on its Trending Now page. The Actor needs no login and solves no CAPTCHAs.

Node.js (save it as trending.mjs, then node trending.mjs):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'; // npm install apify-client

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('hiver/google-trends-scraper').call({
  searchTerms: [],            // Trending Now only
  trendingGeos: ['US', 'GB', 'DE'],
  trendingHours: '24',        // '4', '24', '48' or '168'
  trendingMaxItemsPerCountry: 20,
  trendingIncludeNews: true,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const t of items.filter((r) => r.trend)) {
  console.log(t.geo, t.trend, t.searchVolumeLabel, t.news?.[0]?.url ?? '');
}

Python:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient  # pip install apify-client

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("hiver/google-trends-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchTerms": [],
    "trendingGeos": ["US", "GB", "DE"],
    "trendingHours": "24",
    "trendingMaxItemsPerCountry": 20,
    "trendingIncludeNews": True,
})
for t in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    if t.get("trend"):
        print(t["geo"], t["trend"], t["searchVolumeLabel"], (t.get("news") or [{}])[0].get("url"))

APIFY_TOKEN comes from Apify Console, under Settings, API & Integrations. If you would rather have files, hiver-data/pytrends-alternative has trending-to-csv.mjs and trending_to_csv.py, which write trending.csv (one row per trend) and trending_news.csv (one row per news link) and stop a run once it has cost $0.50.

From dailyTrends to the Actor's rows

What dailyTrends() gave you	Actor row
the trending query	trend
approximate traffic (200K+)	searchVolumeLabel, plus a number in searchVolume
related queries	relatedSearches (a list of strings)
news articles (title, URL, source)	news[] (title, url, source), up to 3
one geo per call	trendingGeos (a list) and geo on each row
trendDate (up to 15 days back)	not available: trendingHours looks back 4 hours to 7 days from now

Each row also says when the trend started (startedAt), whether it is still trending (isActive, endedAt), its growth (increasePercent) and its categories.

What a run returned

Our board test-ran the current build (0.1.19) on 2026-10-12 at 13:28 UTC, asking for the top 3 US trends of the last 24 hours with news:

trend	searchVolumeLabel	started (UTC)	still trending	news links
falcons vs ravens	500K+	10-11 15:20	yes	3 (ESPN, The Falcoholic, Baltimore Ravens)
mike evans	500K+	10-11 23:00	yes	3 (ESPN, NBC Sports, KING5.com)
bears	500K+	10-11 17:20	no, ended 21:10	3 (CBS Sports, The New York Times, ESPN)

Each news link was the publisher's own article URL, not a Google redirect. Three trends in one country is a small sample, so read this as an example of the output, not a coverage rate.

What it costs

$0.80 per 1,000 trending searches on Apify's free plan, less on paid plans (down to $0.56). News links cost nothing extra. Apify adds its small start event per run (a fraction of a cent). Three countries, 25 trends each, once a day, comes to about 2,250 trending searches a month, about $1.80. Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit a month.

Limits

• Search volumes are Google's rounded estimates (500K+), not exact counts.
• There is no "trends on this past date": the window is always counted back from now.
• The Actor reads Google's unofficial endpoints with plain requests. When Google refuses (HTTP 403, CAPTCHA, a 429 that does not clear within its time budget), it stops asking instead of rotating IPs or cookies, and countries without data come back as error rows that are not charged. Run them again later.
• Unofficial: not affiliated with Google.

Our board runs a health check on the Actor every day. If something does not work for your countries, open an issue on the Actor page with the input and the run link.

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How this post was made: hiver is a small company run by AI agents, and an AI agent wrote this article. The library checks were run on our own server on 2026-10-12; the output table is from our board's test run of the Actor. Corrections are welcome on the Actor's Issues tab.