Understanding SERP (Search Engine Results Page) data is crucial these days. SERP data encompasses various elements displayed by search engines, including organic results, paid ads, featured snippets, and more. Scraping SERP data can provide valuable insights for optimizing content and improving search engine rankings.
Table of Contents
What is SERP data?
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) data refers to the information displayed by search engines in response to a user’s query. It includes organic search results, paid advertisements, featured snippets, knowledge graphs, and other elements that appear on the search results page.
Why do we need SERP data?
- SEO Insights: SERP data provides valuable insights into how search engines rank websites for specific queries. By analyzing SERP features, businesses can optimize their content to improve their search engine ranking.
- Competitor Analysis: Monitoring SERP data allows businesses to analyze their competitors’ strategies, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and identify opportunities to improve their SEO efforts.
- Keyword Research: SERP data helps in identifying relevant keywords that are popular among users and have a high search volume. This information can be used to create content that meets the needs of the target audience.
- Performance Tracking: Tracking SERP data over time helps businesses measure the effectiveness of their SEO strategies and identify trends that may impact their search engine ranking.
How to scrape SERP data?
- Select a Scraping Tool: Choose a web scraping tool that is capable of extracting data from search engine results pages. Popular tools include BeautifulSoup (for Python) and Puppeteer (for JavaScript).
- Understand Search Engine Policies: Before scraping SERP data, review the terms of service of the search engine to ensure compliance with their policies. Some search engines may prohibit automated scraping of their results.
- Identify Target Keywords: Determine the keywords for which you want to scrape SERP data. This will help you focus your efforts and obtain relevant information.
- Develop Scraping Script: Write a scraping script using your chosen tool to extract SERP data. This script should navigate to the search engine, enter the target keyword, and extract the desired information from the search results page.
- Handle Captchas and IP Blocking: To avoid being blocked by the search engine, implement measures to handle captchas and rotate IP addresses if necessary.
- Extract Data: Run your scraping script to extract SERP data such as title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and any other relevant information. Store this data in a structured format for analysis.
- Analyze Data: Once you have extracted the SERP data, analyze it to gain insights into keyword performance, competitor strategies, and other relevant metrics.
- Ensure Compliance: Ensure that your scraping activities comply with the search engine’s terms of service and legal requirements to avoid any potential legal issues.
Below, we’ll compare two of the most popular and reliable SERP APIs, namely the Serpstack and VALUE SERP APIs. Both SERP APIs are well-suited to help you make informed decisions about your SEO optimization.
Comparing Serpstack Vs. VALUE SERP
Both the Serpstack and VALUE SERP APIs are feature-rich web-scaping APIs that will help you stay at the top of the search engine results. Let’s take a look and see how they match up.
Search Result Types
Google SERP consists of several elements such as featured snippets, videos, paid results, organic results, and images. Due to this, it’s important to keep track of all these important elements. Each of them can help you with your SEO strategy.
The Serpstack API offers full search engine coverage so that you can get all your search results regarding a specific query:
Ad Results
Google returns paid results/ad results in search results of many search queries or keywords. Serpstack and VALUE SERP both are capable of returning sponsored ads in the order they are displayed on Google. Ads can be at the top of the search results or at the bottom.
Organic Results
Organic results are one of the most important elements of SERP because they usually get the most clicks. These results depend on several factors, such as backlinks, keywords, web traffic, and many more.
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both return organic results for your search query with important information like title, URL, domain, and description. They also tell you the position of an organic result on Google. However, Serpstack also gives you a related page URL for the organic result, whereas VALUE SERP doesn’t.
Image Results
There are two types of image results on Google. One is for images in the SERP of a standard web search. The other is a specific image search.
Serpstack API can return both types of image results. In contrast, VALUE SERP only returns image results specifically related to image search.
Video Results
Just like image results, Google sometimes returns videos in response to a standard web search. And you can also search videos specifically.
Serpstack API is again capable of returning both types of video results, whereas VALUE SERP can only return video results specifically related to a video search.
News Results
When you search for something on Google, you can also search for news specifically related to that query.
Both Serpstack and VALUE SERP can return the SERP results of a search query in detail, such as the position of the news result on Google, its title, and URL. However, Serpstack also returns a URL that leads to the thumbnail of the news result, whereas VALUE SERP doesn’t.
Shopping Results
Google has two types of shopping search results — those provided within search results of a standard web search and those that are searched specifically through the shopping tab.
While Serpstack can return both types of shopping results, VALUE SERP only returns shopping results related to shopping searches.
Local Results
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both can return local results, including maps, with their URL and other details if there are any local results related to your query.
Answer Box
Google now shows direct answers in response to many search queries, which is known as the answer box. It includes featured snippets, or if the best answer to your search is a calculation, Google returns a calculator as the answer box and many other types of answer boxes.
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both are designed to parse all of the most common answer boxes to give you all the relevant information related to your query.
Events
Events are returned by Google in the form of a rich snippet if there are events relevant to your search query. Serpstack and VALUE SERP both are capable of returning these events.
Knowledge Graph
Google shows a knowledge graph in search results if there is enough information available from Google directly or from informational sources, such as Wikipedia, regarding that query.
Serpstack and VALUE SERP are both designed to return knowledge graphs with their title, descriptions, and other relevant information.
Other search results
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both offer more search results options, such as related questions, related searches, related places, and more. They can also return URLs of up to nine upcoming pages.
Speed
When it comes to speed, Serpstack is ahead of VALUE SERP. This is due to the fact that its system is designed to handle a large number of requests simultaneously without the need for a queue. All the API requests sent to Serpstack are processed in just a few milliseconds.
Customizability
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both are highly customizable. They give you several options to tailor your automated search queries. You can specify which device to use, for example, desktop, mobile, or tablet. You can also specify which language to use for your query. In addition to that, you can specify a geographical location for your query. Finally, both let you specify a search engine.
So, in terms of customizability, Serpstack, and VALUE SERP both are similar.
Data Accuracy
Since Google’s algorithm for SERP keeps changing, it’s important to get accurate search results to rank your site on the first page.
Serpstack is known for providing accurate and real-time Google search results. On the other hand, VALUE SERP offers real-time search requests but when we compare the data accuracy of the two APIs, Serpstack is more reliable.
Security
Serpstack offers bank-level security with all data streams sent to or from the API with 256-bit HTTPS/ SSL encryption. VALUE SERP protects data through HTTPS encryption.
Output Format
Serpstack API is easy to use and provides the response in lightweight JSON or CSV format. On the other hand, VALUE SERP offers three response formats; JSON, HTML, and CSV.
Pricing
SerpStack offers several pricing plans, including a free plan. You can use the free plan for unlimited time without any exceptions. Besides 100 searches per month, the free plan also includes several other useful features, such as global locations, proxy networks, search types, and more. If you want more search volume, you can subscribe to one of the paid pricing plans. The Business Pro plan gives you as many as 50,000 searches per month.
Free — 100 Searches per month limited features
Basic level — core features and up to 5.000 monthly searches
$29.99 per month or $23.99 if billed yearly
Business — advanced features and up to 20.000 monthly searches.
$99.99 per month or $79.99 if billed yearly
Business pro Professional level — complete set of API features and up to 50.000 monthly searches.
$199.99 per month or $159.99 if billed yearly
Enterprise — Custom Pricing
In terms of the pricing of VALUE SERP, there isn’t any free plan, but it gives you 100 free searches when you first sign up. After that, you can choose to pay $1.50 for every 1000 searches, or you can choose a monthly payment. The monthly payment depends on the number of searches you want, such as $25 for 15,000 searches, $50 for 35,000 searches, and so on.
When we compare the pricing of Serpstack and VALUE SERP, Serpstack has a slight edge as it offers a free plan. However, paid pricing plans of VALUE SERP are cheaper than serpstack.
Documentation
Serpstack and VALUE SERP both have extensive documentation explaining how each feature of the API works. Their documentation also includes code examples in different programming languages, such as PHP, Python, Nodejs, to make things clearer and get you started in minutes. But when we compare the documentation of both the APIs, serpstack is better as its documentation is clearer and a bit more detailed.
Overall Comparison
| Features | Serpstack | VALUE SERP |
| Ad Results | Yes | Yes |
| Organic Results | Yes | Yes |
| Image Results | Yes (both types of Google image search results) | Yes (only results specifically related to the image search |
| Video Results | Yes (both types of Google video search results) | Yes (only results specifically related to video search |
| News Results | Yes | Yes |
| Shopping Results | Yes (both types of Google shopping search results) | Yes (only results specifically related to shopping search) |
| Local Results | Yes | Yes |
| Answer Box | Yes | Yes |
| Events | Yes | Yes |
| Knowledge Graph | Yes | Yes |
| Customizability | Yes (location, device, language, etc.) | Yes (location, device, language, etc.) |
| Pagination | Yes | Yes |
| Relates searches and questions | Yes | Yes |
| Data security | 256-bit HTTPS | HTTPS |
| Response Format | JSON, CSV | JSON, HTML, CSV |
| Free Pricing Plan | Yes (unlimited) | No (Free 100 searches on sign up and free demo) |
| Programming Language compatibility | All programming languages, including PHP and Python. | PHP, Python, Nodejs, and more |
Pros and Cons
Serpstack
Pros
- Lightning-fast speed
- Provides accurate data
- Lightweight JSON response format
- Extensive documentation
- Free plan
- Tons of features
Cons
- Paid plans are a bit expensive
VALUE SERP
Pros
- Offers all the important search results
- Three response format options, including JSON
- Budget-friendly
- Detailed documentation
Cons
- No free plan
- Doesn’t show images and video results that Google shows in web search results
Which search engine results API should I choose?
With the fast speed of API requests, tons of features, and accurate data that Serpstack provides, it is ahead of VALUE SERP when we compare both APIs.
In conclusion, SERP data plays a vital role in SEO and marketing strategies. By analyzing SERP features, businesses can gain valuable insights into keyword performance, competitor strategies, and user behavior. Choosing the right SERP API, such as Serpstack or VALUE SERP, can help businesses stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimization.