Google Trends MCP

The Google Trends MCP server that actually works under Google's anti-bot. Connect Claude to live Google Trends data — keyword interest, related queries, regional popularity.

Most Google Trends MCP packages crash with Unexpected token 'l' the moment Google blocks them (which is often). Free public proxy lists don't help — we tested 64 proxies from a popular "high-quality" list and 0 worked. This one uses your own rotating proxy with auto-retry, so blocked requests transparently retry on a fresh IP.

Built by Denys Malieiev.

Why this one

What's fixed	Detail
Free public proxies don't work	We tested 64 — 0 survived. Bring your own rotating residential (Webshare/IPRoyal/Smartproxy free tier = ~46k requests on 1 GB)
Auto-retry on Google blocks	When Google returns HTML, we retry up to 3 times with a fresh proxy from the pool. End-to-end success rate in our tests: 5/5
HTML-detection at the wrapper level	Other MCPs let `JSON.parse` crash with cryptic errors. We detect HTML before parsing
Honest about what doesn't work	`get_trending_searches` is intentionally not exposed — Google blocks `dailyTrends`/`realTimeTrends` aggressively without residential proxies. We don't pretend otherwise
Pool with fail-tracking	Proxies that fail 3 times get dropped automatically. Random rotation per request
Per-request rotation	Each request picks a random proxy from the pool — Google can't accumulate per-IP rate limits

Quick Start

npx @den.dance/google-trends-mcp

Works out-of-the-box from non-flagged IPs, but Google rate-limits datacenter ranges aggressively. For reliable use, set up a proxy (see below).

Setup

1. Get a rotating proxy account

Recommended (all have free tiers / pay-per-GB):

Webshare — free 1 GB residential (~46k Google Trends requests)
IPRoyal — $1.75/GB, lowest price
Smartproxy / Decodo — $4-7/GB, large pool
Bright Data / Oxylabs — $5-8/GB, enterprise grade

Make sure the provider allows *.google.com in their ToS (most majors do).

2. Configure Claude Desktop

Edit your Claude Desktop config file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Single rotating endpoint (recommended — provider rotates IPs internally):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-trends": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@den.dance/google-trends-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PROXY_URL": "http://USER:PASS@gate.smartproxy.com:7000"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or an explicit list (useful for Webshare-style per-port proxies):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-trends": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@den.dance/google-trends-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PROXY_LIST": "http://user:pass@host1:6114,http://user:pass@host2:6014,http://user:pass@host3:5863"
      }
    }
  }
}

For longer lists, put proxies in a file (one per line, # comments allowed) and point to it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-trends": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@den.dance/google-trends-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PROXY_LIST_FILE": "/home/you/.config/google-trends/proxies.txt"
      }
    }
  }
}

# ~/.config/google-trends/proxies.txt
http://user:pass@host1:6114
http://user:pass@host2:6014
http://user:pass@host3:5863

chmod 600 the file — credentials live there. Run proxy_refresh from Claude to hot-reload after editing.

Restart Claude Desktop after saving the JSON config.

3. Configure Claude Code

claude mcp add google-trends \
  -e PROXY_URL="http://USER:PASS@gate.smartproxy.com:7000" \
  -- npx @den.dance/google-trends-mcp

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Description
`PROXY_URL`	recommended	Single rotating proxy endpoint. Provider handles IP rotation internally. No validation, no fallback
`PROXY_LIST`	alternative	Comma-separated list of proxies (`http://user:pass@host:port,...`). Validated on startup, bad ones auto-dropped
`PROXY_LIST_FILE`	alternative	Path to a file with one proxy per line (`#` comments and blank lines allowed). Validated on startup. Re-read on `proxy_refresh`
`PROXIES_ENABLED`	no	Set to `false` to disable all proxy logic (direct requests). Default: enabled

Priority: PROXY_URL > PROXY_LIST > PROXY_LIST_FILE. If none are set, requests go direct (no proxy) — works only from non-flagged IPs.

Tools

Data tools

compare_keywords — search interest over time for up to 5 keywords. Returns a timeline of relative scores.
get_related_queries — top + rising related queries for a keyword. Powered by Google's relatedQueries endpoint.
get_interest_by_region — top 20 regions by interest in a keyword.

Admin tools

proxy_status — show source (single / env-list / env-file / none / disabled), working count, age, freshness, validation progress.
proxy_refresh — force re-validation of the current proxy source. No-op in PROXY_URL mode.

Intentionally not exposed

get_trending_searches (daily / real-time trends) — Google blocks these endpoints aggressively. Even with residential proxies the success rate is too low to ship. We'd rather not lie about it.

Known limitations

Google sometimes blocks multi-keyword requests (2 or 4 keywords) more aggressively than single. Our auto-retry handles this — but if all 3 attempts hit blocks, the request fails. Increase MAX_ATTEMPTS in trends-client.js if you need higher tolerance.
The underlying google-trends-api library scrapes Google's internal endpoints, which are undocumented and can change. If the library breaks, this MCP breaks too.
For very heavy use (>10k req/day) consider a managed service like SerpAPI or DataForSEO — at that scale the price difference vs your own proxy is marginal and the operational burden disappears.

Example prompts for Claude

"Compare search interest for 'claude ai', 'chatgpt', and 'gemini' over the last 12 months"
"What are people searching for related to 'sourdough bread'?"
"Which regions have highest interest in 'electric vehicle'?"
"Show me the proxy pool status"

Architecture notes

~450 lines total across server.js (MCP handlers), proxy-manager.js (pool/cache), trends-client.js (retry logic with DI)
Validation: parallel workers (concurrency 50) check each proxy against trends.google.com/api/autocomplete/test, looking for the anti-XSSI prefix )]}' in the response
Cache: working proxies persisted to proxies.json (gitignored), keyed by SHA1 of input list — automatically invalidated when source changes
TTL: 4 hours; background re-validation when cache is stale
Fail tracking: proxies drop from rotation after 3 failures per session
Retry: every tool call retries up to 3 times with fresh getAgent() on HTML response or exception

Development

Tests

# Unit only (fast, offline, no network)
npm test

# With coverage report (html in coverage/)
npm run test:coverage

# Integration (real Google hit, gated)
RUN_INTEGRATION=1 npm run test:integration

# E2E (spawns server.js, JSON-RPC over stdio)
RUN_E2E=1 npm run test:e2e

# Everything
npm run test:all

Project structure

server.js — MCP server entrypoint (stdio transport)
trends-client.js — Google Trends API wrapper with retry-on-HTML
proxy-manager.js — proxy pool, validation, cache, source priority
tests/unit/ — pure unit tests, no network (~40 tests, runs in ~2s)
tests/integration/ — real Google endpoint tests (gated by RUN_INTEGRATION=1)
tests/e2e/ — full MCP protocol tests via spawn (gated by RUN_E2E=1)

Security

Never commit proxy credentials to version control. Use PROXY_LIST_FILE pointing to a chmod 600 file outside the repo, or your secrets manager
proxies.json cache (built from validated proxies) is gitignored and never published — re-generated on first run after install

License

MIT

google trends mcp