Google Search selectors

Want to extract Google Search results straight into your spreadsheet?

You can see below the exhaustive list of selectors to scrape Google Search results. These built-in data selectors relate to the =IMPORTFROMGOOGLE( ) function; just pick them up directly in our Google SERP scraper template or use them by yourself in your own spreadsheet.

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE("rental car", "title, link")
=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE(A2,B1:C1)

1. Selectors for the Google SERP

SelectorDescription
search_termoutputs the terms of the query
linkoutputs the link of the result
titleoutputs the title of the result
bodyoutputs the body of the result
date(please note that not all results have a date)
rating(please note that not all results have a rating)
number_reviews(please note that not all results have the number of reviews)

2. Other selectors

The following selectors shouldn’t be mixed with the previous selectors as they don’t refer to the list of results

SelectorDescription
phone_numberWorks if you specifically ask for phone numbers in your search
emailWorks if you specifically ask for email addresses in your search
total_resultsNumber of results as displayed at the top left part of the SERP.
Beware that the value usually varies all the time
people_also_ask_questionsThe 4 questions asked in the “People also ask” block
people_also_ask_linksLinks to the questions.
At the moment we don’t have a mechanism to retrieve answers directly

The options to empower your Google Scraping

Finally, the function comes with additional features using options. They allow you to collect data using criterions and they must be imputed as a third argument within your formula:

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE( “rental car”  ,  "link"  ,  "option(s)" )

Use “numResults” to set a number of results

This option allows you to extend the number of results extracted for each keyword.
To set that number, just specify it on the cell next to it and select the two cells together.

In the following example, the “numResults” set this number at 30: 

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE( A2:A3 ,  B1:D1 ,  C1:D1 )
Option numResults for ImportFromGoogle function

Use “languages” to collect the data to the requested language

The “languages” option allows you to restrict the results to websites in the specified language.

The example below will pull out websites in English only:

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE( "keywords" ,  "selector" , "languages:en" )
Use languages option to filter the results given by ImportFromGoogle function

Use “period” to filter according to the published date

Period allows you to filter the websites collected based to the date of publication. By using this option, you can select results from the past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past month or past year.

The function will be written as:

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE( "keywords" ,  "selectors" ,  "period: year").

Use “includeOmittedResults” to collect also omitted results

“includeOmittedResults” allows the function to collect data from omitted results (results not shown by google). If the data scraped takes more time than usual, do not worry!  

Combine options

As for keywords and selectors, you can mix several options within the same function, for example:

=IMPORTFROMGOOGLE("your keyword" , "your selector" , "numResults:300,compare")
Combine several options with ImportFromGoogle

Watch out our video demo!

Finally, we invite you to test our Google scraper template for an easy onboarding!

Last but not least, you can also watch our tutorial video.

If you have any doubts or any question about this function or about ImportFromWeb, do not hesitate to contact us.