Quickstart

You'll make a live Google search from your terminal in under a minute.

1. Get an API key#

Create a free account, verify your email, then create a key under Dashboard → API keys. Keys look like sw_live_… and are shown once — store it somewhere safe, such as an environment variable:

export SERPWIZ_API_KEY="sw_live_your_key_here"

The free tier gives you 1,000 queries a month at 1 request per second. No card needed.

2. Make a request#

curl#

curl "https://api.serpwiz.com/v1/google/search?q=coffee+near+seattle&gl=us&hl=en" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $SERPWIZ_API_KEY"

Python#

import os, requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.serpwiz.com/v1/google/search",
    params={"q": "coffee near seattle", "gl": "us", "hl": "en"},
    headers={"X-API-Key": os.environ["SERPWIZ_API_KEY"]},
    timeout=60,
)
r.raise_for_status()
for item in r.json().get("results", []):
    print(item["position"], item["title"], item["url"])

JavaScript (Node 18+)#

const url = new URL("https://api.serpwiz.com/v1/google/search");
url.search = new URLSearchParams({ q: "coffee near seattle", gl: "us", hl: "en" });

const res = await fetch(url, { headers: { "X-API-Key": process.env.SERPWIZ_API_KEY } });
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).error.message);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.results?.map(r => r.title));

PHP#

<?php
$query = http_build_query(['q' => 'coffee near seattle', 'gl' => 'us', 'hl' => 'en']);
$ch = curl_init("https://api.serpwiz.com/v1/google/search?$query");
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 60,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => ['X-API-Key: ' . getenv('SERPWIZ_API_KEY')],
]);
$data = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
foreach ($data['results'] ?? [] as $r) echo $r['position'], ' ', $r['title'], "\n";

3. Read the response#

A successful call returns 200 with the results as JSON, plus headers telling you what it cost:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Credits-Charged: 1
X-Credits-Remaining: 999
X-RateLimit-Limit: 1
X-Request-Id: 9f2c1a7b3e4d5f60

{
  "search_term": "coffee near seattle",
  "results": [
    { "position": 1, "title": "The 38 Essential Seattle Coffee Shops", "url": "https://…", "description": "…" }
  ],
  "ads": [],
  "top_stories": [],
  "knowledge_panel": { "name": "", "…": "…" },
  "related_keywords": { "spelling_suggestion": null, "keywords": [ { "position": 1, "keyword": "…" } ] },
  "next_page": 2,
  "next_start": 10
}

Searches take a few seconds — set your HTTP client timeout to at least 60 seconds.

Next#

• Google Search parameters — country, language, pagination, date filters.
• Google Maps — places, ratings and reviews.
• Errors and Rate limits — what to do with 4xx/5xx and 429.

This page as Markdown: /docs/quickstart.md