By default a Google Search API returns the same evergreen results every time. When you’re tracking news, trends or breaking topics, you want only recent pages — and that’s exactly what the tbs time filter does. It mirrors the Tools → Past hour / day / week menu in the Google UI.
The tbs parameter
Add tbs to the request body with a qdr (query date range) value:
| Value | Window |
|---|---|
qdr:h | Past hour |
qdr:d | Past day |
qdr:w | Past week |
curl -X POST https://api.serp.cheap/v1/search \
-H "X-API-Key: $SERP_CHEAP_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"q":"openai announcement","gl":"us","tbs":"qdr:d"}'That returns only pages Google indexed in the past day — no stale evergreen articles crowding out the news.
A news monitor in a few lines
Poll on a schedule and you have a lightweight alerting system. Here it is in Python:
import requests, time
def recent(query, window="qdr:h"):
r = requests.post(
"https://api.serp.cheap/v1/search",
headers={"X-API-Key": KEY},
json={"q": query, "gl": "us", "tbs": window},
)
return r.json().get("organic", [])
seen = set()
while True:
for hit in recent('"your brand"'):
if hit["link"] not in seen:
seen.add(hit["link"])
print("NEW:", hit["title"], hit["link"])
time.sleep(600) # every 10 minutesSwap qdr:h for qdr:d/qdr:w to widen the window. This is the backbone of brand and competitor monitoring.
What it’s good for
- News & PR monitoring — catch mentions within the hour.
- Trend detection — feed fresh results into an AI research agent so it reasons over what’s happening now.
- Fresh-content SEO — see who’s ranking for a topic this week, not who ranked years ago.
- Price & product changes — combine with price monitoring to spot new listings fast.
Combine with other parameters
tbs stacks with everything else — country, language, pagination:
-d '{"q":"élections","gl":"fr","hl":"fr","tbs":"qdr:w","page":1}'That’s recent French results, in French. See the full parameter reference and local SEO by country.
Next
Try serp.cheap
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$0.90/1k) and Apify ($1.50/1k).