mcp-server-searchapi

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

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.