❗️
Search API is Deprecated, Use DQL Instead
Unlike Search API, DQL (Diffbot Query Language) supports richer operators and several quality of life shortcuts. See Search a Crawl/Bulkjob Using DQL.
We will continue to maintain this legacy documentation as necessary, with limited support. There are no plans to close access to this endpoint.

Diffbot's Search API allows you to search the extracted content of your Diffbot "collections." A collection is a discrete Crawl or Bulk job output, and includes all of the web pages processed within that job.

In order to search a collection, you must first create that collection using either Crawl or the Bulk API. A collection can be searched before a crawl or bulk job is finished.

Query Operators

The query argument contains the actual search contents you wish to perform on your collection(s). Multiple operators and values can be combined.

query=	Returns...
`computer vision`	All objects containing "computer" and "vision" anywhere in all Diffbot-extracted fields.
`"web page analysis"`	All objects containing the phrase "web page analysis" anywhere in all Diffbot-extracted fields.
`author:"John Henry"`	All objects containing "John Henry" in the `author` field. All Diffbot fields within a collection can be queried against. Other examples: `tags:"Barack Obama"`, `offerPrice:10.00`
`images.caption:flower`	All objects containing "flower" in the `caption` field within a nested `images` array. Other example: `images.url:amazon.com`
`type:article`	All objects identified as articles / processed by the Article API. Other examples: `type:product`, `type:image`
`football -49ers`	All objects containing "football" but not containing "49ers," in all Diffbot-extracted fields. Other examples: `title:pantene -title:conditioner`, `text:diffbot -author:"farhad manjoo"`
`john OR paul`	Objects containing either "john" or "paul" in Diffbot-extracted fields. `OR` must be capitalized. Other examples: `title:ukraine OR title:putin`, `"bill clinton" OR "george bush"`, `title:"puppy chow" OR text:"dog food"`
`george AND ringo`	Objects containing both "george" and "ringo" in Diffbot-extracted fields. `AND` must be capitalized. Other examples: `title:lakers AND text:basketball`, `"red sox" AND author:"bill simmons"`
`(obama OR clinton) AND president`	Objects containing either "obama" or "clinton," and also "president." Parentheses can be used to nest Boolean queries. Other examples: `(title:diffbot AND title:robots) OR title:startup`
`site:diffbot.com`	All objects extracted from diffbot.com. The site operator queries against values in the `pageUrl` and `resolvedPageUrl` fields.
`sortby:timestamp`	Objects sorted (descending) by the specified Diffbot field. Must be a numeric (e.g. "offerPrice") or date field. For date formatting, see Date Queries below.
`revsortby:date`	Objects sorted (ascending) by the specified Diffbot field. Must be a numeric or date field. For date formatting, see Date Queries below.
`min:timestamp:1426784899`	All objects indexed (processed) after March 19, 2015 (in Unix epoch time). The `min` or `max` operators work only with numeric or date fields. For date formatting options, see Date Queries below.
`max:offerPrice:1000`	All objects with an offerPrice value equal to or less than "1000." Must be a numeric or date field. For date formatting options, see Date Queries below.

Query URL Encoding

Be sure to URL-encode your query. The following examples show some sample queries properly encoded.

Query	URL-Encoded Query
`computer vision`	`computer%20vision`
`obama type:article sortby:date`	`obama%20type%3Aarticle%20sortby%3Adate`
`text:cats author:"Jet Li" min:date:1399669321`	`text%3Acats%20author%3A%22Jet%20Li%22%20min%3Adate%3A1399669321`
`min:date:"Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00:00 GMT"`	`min%3Adate%3A%22Thu%2C%2022%20May%202014%2000%3A00%3A00%20GMT%22`

The space character can be represented by "%20" or the "+"-sign.

Date Queries

You can query against Diffbot API date fields (the extracted article or discussion post date, for instance), or against the timestamp field, which represents the time of an object's indexing into the collection.

The timestamp field can be used to return the latest content from a crawl or bulk job (e.g. min:timestamp:2015-03-01, for instance only the objects found in the last crawl round, or since the last search was run.

When querying dates, your date values should be in one the following formats:

ISO 8601, e.g. 2014-05-09 or 2014-05-10T17:40:25+00:00
Unix timestamp, e.g. 1399669321
RFC 1123 (HTTP/1.1), e.g. "Fri, 09 May 2014 23:41:22 GMT"

Be sure to wrap any space-containing date strings in quotation marks.

Response

The Search API returns all matching objects found in the collection(s) searched in a JSON format.

Each response includes a request object (metadata specific to the search request), and an objects array, which will include the extracted information for all matching objects.

The specific fields returned within each object depend upon the type of each object, and the fields requested in the Crawlbot or Bulk API jobs that populate your collection(s).

{
  "request": {
    "num": 20,
    "col": "sampleCollection",
    "start": 0,
    "token": "...",
    "query": "diffy"
  },
  "objects": [
    {
      "type": "article",
      "title": "Diffbot's New Product API Teaches Robots to Shop Online",
      "author": "John Davi",
      "date": "Wed, 31 Jul 2013 08:00:00 GMT",
      "videos": [
        {
          "primary": "true",
          "url": "http://www.youtube.com/embed/lfcri5ungRo?feature=oembed"
        }
      ],
      "tags": ["e-commerce", "SaaS"],
      "pageUrl": "http://blog.diffbot.com/diffbots-new-product-api-teaches-robots-to-shop-online/",
      "humanLanguage": "en",
      "text": "Diffbot's human wranglers are proud today to announce the release of our newest product: an API for... products!\nThe Product API can be used for extracting clean, structured data from any e-commerce product page. It automatically makes available all the product data you'd expect: price, discount/savings amount, shipping cost, product description, any relevant product images, SKU and/or other product IDs.\nEven cooler: pair the Product API with Crawlbot, our intelligent site-spidering tool, and let Diffbot determine which pages are products, then automatically structure the entire catalog. Here's a quick demonstration of Crawlbot at work:\nWe've developed the Product API over the course of two years, building upon our core vision technology that's extracted structured data from billions of web pages, and training our machine learning systems using data from tens of thousands of unique shopping sites. We can't wait for you to try it out.\nWhat are you waiting for? Check out the Product API documentation and dive on in! If you need a token, check out our pricing and plans (including our Free plan).\nQuestions? Hit us up at support@diffbot.com.",
      "html": "<p>Diffbot’s human wranglers are proud today to announce the release of our newest product: an API for… products!</p><p>The <a href=\"http://www.diffbot.com/products/automatic/product\">Product API</a> can be used for extracting clean, structured data from any e-commerce product page. It automatically makes available all the product data you’d expect: price, discount/savings amount, shipping cost, product description, any relevant product images, SKU and/or other product IDs.</p><p>Even cooler: pair the Product API with <a href=\"http://www.diffbot.com/products/crawlbot\">Crawlbot</a>, our intelligent site-spidering tool, and let Diffbot determine which pages are products, then automatically structure the entire catalog. Here’s a quick demonstration of Crawlbot at work:</p><figure><iframe frameborder=\"0\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/lfcri5ungRo?feature=oembed\"></iframe></figure><p>We’ve developed the Product API over the course of two years, building upon our core vision technology that’s extracted structured data from billions of web pages, and training our machine learning systems using data from tens of thousands of unique shopping sites. We can’t wait for you to try it out.</p><p>What are you waiting for? Check out the <a href=\"http://www.diffbot.com/products/automatic/product\">Product API documentation</a> and dive on in! If you need a token, check out our <a href=\"http://www.diffbot.com/pricing\">pricing and plans</a> (including our Free plan).</p><p>Questions? Hit us up at <a href=\"mailto:support@diffbot.com\">support@diffbot.com</a>.</p>",
      "diffbotUri": "article|3|768070723"
    }
  ]
}

Example Searches

The most recently-written 40 articles in the "dailycrawl" collection.

query: type:article sortby:date
col: dailycrawl
num: 40

https://api.diffbot.com/v3/search?token=...&num=40&col=dailycrawl&query=type%3Aarticle%20sortby%3Adate

100 articles written by Bill Simmons, at Grantland.com, from the "sports" collection, ordered by oldest first.

query: type:article author:"Bill Simmons" site:grandland.com revsortby:date
col: sports
num: 100

https://api.diffbot.com/v3/search?token=...&num=100&col=sports&query=type%3Aarticle%20author%3A%22Bill%20Simmons%22%20site%3Agrandland.com%20revsortby%3Adate

20 articles mentioning "ukraine" or "Russia" in the main text, ordered by most recently indexed/crawled, from the "russiatoday" collections:

query: text:ukraine OR text:russia sortby:timestamp

https://api.diffbot.com/v3/search?token=...&col=russiatoday&query=text%3Aukraine%20OR%20text%3Arussia%20sortby%3Atimestamp

The second page of 20 products with "Nike" in the title, between $40 and $50, from the "shoestores" collection:

query: type:product title:nike min:offerPrice:40 max:offerPrice:50
col: shoestores
start: 20

https://api.diffbot.com/v3/search?token=...&col=shoestores&start=20query=type%3Aproduct%20title%3Anike%20min%3AofferPrice%3A40%20max%3AofferPrice%3A50