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roy6732856

mcp-server-searchapi

by roy6732856

mcp-server-searchapi

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

npm version License: MIT


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 runnpx mcp-server-searchapi with no installation step.


Related MCP server: Custom Search MCP Server

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


Requirements

  • Node.js ≥ 18

  • A SearchApi API key (free tier available)


Install & run

SEARCHAPI_API_KEY=your_key npx mcp-server-searchapi

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


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.


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"]
}

Tool reference

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? }


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?}] }


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?}] }


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?}] }


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.


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

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Available Tools

4 tools

Tool Schema Changelog

Recent tool additions, removals, and schema changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

  1. 4 tool updatesv0.1.0
    • First observednews_search
    • First observedscholar_search
    • First observedweb_search
    • First observedyoutube_search

TDQS

A4.2/5.0

Scored across 4 tools

Disambiguation5/5

Each tool targets a distinct content source (YouTube, web, news, scholar) with specific result types, leaving no ambiguity about which tool to use for a given search need.

Naming Consistency5/5

All tool names follow a uniform '<source>_search' pattern, making the tool set highly predictable and easy to navigate.

Tool Count5/5

Four tools is a well-scoped set for a search API server, covering the most common search verticals without unnecessary bloat.

Completeness4/5

The surface covers web, news, academic, and video search, which are fundamental. Minor gaps like image or social search exist but are not critical for the apparent purpose.

Maintenance

ActivityStale
ResponsivenessNo issues

Related MCP Connectors

  • MCP server for Google search results via SERP API

  • Your agent needs the open web — searched by more than one engine, and read as clean markdown rather than raw HTML. **What you can ask for** • "Search this question with two providers and tell me where they disagree." • "Scrape these 40 URLs into markdown, in one batch." • "Crawl this documentation site and give me every page." • "Do deep research on this topic and cite the sources." • "Find the academic papers behind this claim." **How to use it** Point any MCP client at https://mcp.aisa.one/search/mcp and sign in with OAuth — there is no key to create or paste. 30 tools across several independent providers: Tavily and Exa search, answers, contents and agent runs; Firecrawl scrape, batch scrape, crawl, map and search; Perplexity Sonar, Sonar Pro, reasoning and deep research; Oxylabs AI search and LLM jobs; OpenAI and Anthropic web search; and scholarly search. **Why this rather than the source** Several independent indexes behind one account, because one engine's blind spot is not visible from inside it. **It is also a door to the rest** The same login reaches 26 sources and 580+ operations. Find the page here, then ask the same agent who links to it or how much traffic it gets — without adding a second server. **What it costs** Finding and inspecting an operation is free. Running one is billed per call at API prices, with no seat and no monthly minimum, and every call takes max_price_usd so an agent cannot overspend by accident. **Where else it reaches** https://mcp.aisa.one/seo-serp/mcp for the Google results page itself, https://mcp.aisa.one/seo-serp-other-engines/mcp for Bing, Baidu and Naver.

  • Docs: https://docs.keenable.ai/mcp-server Keenable is a free, remote MCP server that gives agents access to the web index. Search the web with ranked results and date/site filters, then fetch any indexed page as clean markdown. Works out of the box with no account or API key.

  • Public MCP server for the LLM Search Engine

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