YouTube Shorts API: See What Ranks in Google Short Videos in 2026 (Shorts, Reels, TikTok)

Short-form video has its own SERP now. Search a topic on your phone and Google shows a dedicated short-videos block mixing YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels, ranked. That block is the scoreboard for short-form content, and no official API returns it. The Google Short Videos API on Apify scrapes it for you: query in, flat rows of ranked short videos out.

Disclosure: the Apify links in this post are affiliate links. If you run the Actor, I may earn a referral commission at no extra cost to you.

Is there a YouTube Shorts API?

Sort of, and that is the problem. The official YouTube Data API is real and works for YouTube metadata, but it has no view of what ranks in Google's short-videos block, and it knows nothing about TikTok or Reels. Nobody ships an official cross-platform endpoint for "which short videos does Google rank for this topic." So a YouTube Shorts API in the ranking sense means a scraper you call like an API: send a query, get the ranked block back as JSON.

What the Google Short Videos API returns

The Google Short Videos API returns each short-form result as a structured row: rank, title, link, preview image, source platform, creator or channel, and clip duration, plus related-search suggestions on mobile and tablet.

Field	Example	Notes
rank	3	Position in the short-videos block
title	"10 minute no-equipment workout"	As Google shows it
link	video URL	Direct to the clip
source	YouTube, TikTok, Facebook	Platform tag per result
channel	creator name	Who posted it
duration	0:42	Clip length

On mobile or tablet device profiles you also get the "people also search for" suggestions, which is free keyword research.

Who this is for

Content strategists deciding what to film next, social teams tracking which platform wins a topic, and SEO folks mining the related-search suggestions for short-form keyword ideas.

The manual way, and where it breaks

Scraping this block yourself means emulating a mobile device, because the desktop page often does not even show it. So you are spoofing user agents, rendering JavaScript, and parsing a carousel whose markup was not designed to be read. Every result looks slightly different depending on the source platform, and the block's layout changes more often than regular results. I would rather maintain almost anything else.

The faster way: run the Google Short Videos API

Apify Console

1. Open the Google Short Videos API and click Try for free.
2. Enter a search query in q; keep device on mobile to get related searches.
3. Run it and download the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

REST

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/johnvc~google-short-videos-api/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "q": "air fryer recipes", "device": "mobile", "max_pages": 1 }'

Run endpoint reference: the Apify API docs.

Get ranked short videos in Python

import json
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("johnvc/google-short-videos-api").call(
    run_input={"q": "workout tips", "device": "mobile", "max_pages": 1}
)

items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(f"{len(items)} results")
print(json.dumps(items[0], indent=2))

The first row shows the shape: rank, title, link, source platform, channel, and duration, ready for a dataframe.

Search across platforms in one call

One query returns YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Reels results side by side, each tagged with its source, so platform comparison is a groupby instead of three scrapers. The task Cross-platform short video search API is that setup saved.

Scrape YouTube Shorts and Reels by keyword

For keyword-first research, two tasks cover the recipe: Scrape YouTube Shorts and Reels by keyword and Search YouTube Shorts by keyword via API. Point either at your topic list and export.

See which TikToks rank on Google

TikTok's own analytics will not tell you what Google ranks. See which TikToks rank on Google for air fryer recipes filters the block down to one platform for one niche, a pattern that transfers to any topic.

Use it from Claude and other MCP clients

Over MCP, Claude, Claude Code, and Cursor can run this research mid-conversation: "what short videos rank for 'meal prep' and which platform dominates" becomes one prompt. The task Do short video SERP research in Claude via MCP has the setup, and you can read more about Claude and Claude Code at claude.ai.

FAQ about scraping short video results

Is there a free YouTube Shorts scraper?

Billing here is per page fetched, with about 10 short videos per page and max_pages capping the spend before a run starts. New Apify accounts include free platform credit, so early research runs typically cost nothing out of pocket.

Does the scraper cover TikTok and Instagram Reels too?

Yes. The block itself is cross-platform, and every row carries a source tag, so you can compare how YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook or Instagram content splits the ranking for a topic.

Can the scraper get YouTube Shorts transcripts?

No, this one returns ranking metadata: titles, links, sources, channels, durations. For the words inside the videos, pair it with the YouTube Transcripts API, which takes the video links this scraper returns.

Can I use this scraper for AI-generated Shorts research?

It will not make videos for you, but it answers the question that should come first: what already ranks for your topic, in what format, at what duration. Plenty of AI-shorts pipelines use exactly this data to pick topics.

Does the scraper work in Claude via MCP?

Yes. Connect the Apify MCP server and it becomes a callable tool in Claude, Claude Code, or Cursor, which is what the SERP-research task above demonstrates.

Can I schedule the scraper to track short video trends?

Yes. Save your queries as a task, attach an Apify schedule, and the dataset accumulates a ranking history per topic, which is how you catch a format trend early. Start from the Google Short Videos API.

More from Truffle Pig Data

Two neighbors in the video and search family: the YouTube Transcripts API for what the videos actually say, and the Google Images API for the image side of the SERP.

Wrapping up

Short-form video rankings are public; they were just never queryable. The Google Short Videos API makes them a JSON feed you can build on.