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 run — npx mcp-server-searchapi with no installation step.

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

`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? }

`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?}] }

`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?}] }

`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?}] }

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.