How is this different from Google Alerts?

Google Alerts sends email digests with no API. SerpKite monitors are created and read over the API, run on your schedule, use any country and language, and post JSON to a signed webhook.

What does a monitor cost?

Each run is billed like the request it makes: 1 credit for a 10-result search or news run, 7 for num=100. Empty and failed runs are free. Runs are charged to the monitor's API key, under its limits and your spend cap.

Does it track ranking changes?

No. Search monitors report new URLs, not position changes. For positions, see the Rank Tracker API.

Yes. Every event carries X-SerpKite-Signature, an HMAC-SHA256 of the timestamp and body, so you can verify it came from SerpKite.

POST /v1/monitors

SERP Monitoring API

A Google Alerts you can program: save a search or news query, choose a schedule, and receive only the results you haven't seen before, signed, at your webhook. Or watch a page and hear when its content changes.

Get a free API key Read the reference

1 credit per run, priced like the search or page fetch it makes (1 per 10 results, num=100 is 7); empty and failed runs are free 2,500 free credits, no card Failed calls are free

Overview

What the SERP Monitoring API does

A monitor saves a /v1/search or /v1/news request and runs it hourly, daily, weekly or on any interval from 1 hour to 30 days. Each run reports only the results it hasn't reported before. With endpoint: "webpage" and a url, it watches a page and reports when its content changes, with the new Markdown.

New results are kept in the monitor's run history for 24 hours and, with a webhook_url, posted as a signed monitor.results event. Monitors keep search options such as country, language, time, domain filters and engine, so a monitor can watch Google, or fall back to other engines with engine: "auto".

Up to 100 monitors per account. A monitor pauses itself after 10 failed runs in a row.

What you get

id string: The monitor's ID, for GET, PATCH, DELETE /v1/monitors/{id}, POST /v1/monitors/{id}/run (run at the next poll, within about 30 seconds) and GET /v1/monitors/{id}/runs.
request object: The saved search (q and options), watched url, or AI prompt (with country, language, web_search, track).
interval_seconds / next_run_at / last_run_at mixed: The schedule.
last_status / last_error / last_new_results mixed: The last run: ok, error, webhook_failed or paused, and how many new results it found.
runs / consecutive_failures / credits_used number: Totals over all runs; the failure streak pauses the monitor at 10.

Request

POST /v1/monitors

cURL

Python

TypeScript

fetch

PHP

curl https://api.serpkite.com/v1/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPKITE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"ai agents funding","endpoint":"news","interval":"daily","webhook_url":"https://example.com/hooks/serpkite"}'

Response (illustrative, placeholder domains)

201 Created · the saved monitor

{
  "id": "01926a3e-9d1f-7a2b-8c3d-4e5f6a7b8c9d",
  "name": "",
  "endpoint": "news",
  "request": {
    "q": "ai agents funding"
  },
  "metadata": null,
  "interval_seconds": 86400,
  "webhook_url": "https://example.com/hooks/serpkite",
  "active": true,
  "next_run_at": "2026-10-04T12:00:00Z",
  "last_run_at": "2026-10-03T12:00:05Z",
  "last_status": "ok",
  "last_error": null,
  "last_new_results": 10,
  "runs": 1,
  "consecutive_failures": 0,
  "credits_used": 1,
  "created_at": "2026-10-03T12:00:00Z"
}

Every response also carries X-Credits-Used, X-Credits-Remaining, X-Cache and X-Tokens-Estimate headers. Full endpoint reference

Reference

Parameters

The fields /v1/monitors accepts in its JSON body.

SERP Monitoring API parameters
Name	Type	Default	Description
`q`	string	–	The query, for search and news monitors.
`url`	string	–	The page to watch, for endpoint: "webpage".
`prompt`	string	–	The prompt asked every run, for AI assistant monitors (up to 4,000 characters).
`endpoint`	string	search	What to run. Values: search, news, webpage, chatgpt, gemini, copilot, ai_mode, brave_ai.
`interval`	string	daily	How often to run. Values: hourly, daily, weekly.
`interval_seconds`	integer	–	Exact interval, 3,600–2,592,000 seconds. Overrides interval.
`webhook_url`	string	–	Receives signed monitor.results events. Without one, read new results from the run history.
`name`	string	–	Your label, up to 200 characters.
`active`	boolean	true	false creates the monitor paused.
`metadata`	object	–	Your own JSON object (up to 2 KB), echoed on the monitor and in its webhooks.
`country`	string	us	Country to search from, as a two-letter ISO code (us, gb, de, in…). Defaults to the country a location ends in.
`language`	string	en	Interface language, as a language code with an optional region (en, de, pt-BR, zh-TW…).
`location`	string	–	Canonical location for local results, e.g. "Austin, Texas, United States". Ending in a country name also sets country.
`time`	string	–	Restrict to recent results. Shorthand for tbs=qdr:*. Values: hour, day, week, month, year.
`num`	integer	–	Watch only the top num results (1–100).
`device`	string	desktop	Which SERP layout to fetch. Values: desktop, mobile.
`safe`	string	off	SafeSearch filtering. Values: off, active.
`include_domains`	string[]	–	Only results from these sources, up to 20: a domain (example.com, subdomains match), a path prefix (github.com/org) or a TLD (.gov). Compiled to site: operators and enforced on the results. Search, news, images, videos.
`exclude_domains`	string[]	–	Drop results from these sources, up to 20, same formats as include_domains. Search, news, images, videos.
`engine`	string or array	google	Which search providers may answer. google is Google only (SerpKite still retries Google internally); auto falls back to other providers when Google is blocked or times out; consensus (search only) asks several independent indexes in parallel, merges the results by URL, ranks them by agreement and lists each result's sources, at the sum of one page per provider that returned results; a provider name or a list (e.g. google,brave) restricts the request to those. meta.engine names the provider that answered. Values: google, auto, consensus, brave, bing, yahoo, duckduckgo, mojeek, wikipedia, yandex.
`web_search`	boolean	–	endpoint: "chatgpt" only: make ChatGPT search the web (default true).
`track`	string[]	–	AI assistant monitors: up to 20 brands or domains to check every answer for (mentions).

Full reference, error codes and headers are in the /v1/monitors reference.

Use cases

What people build with the SERP Monitoring API

Brand and competitor alerts

Get new news articles and pages that mention a brand, every hour or day.

Agent triggers

Wake an agent when new results appear, through a signed webhook.

Release and policy pages

Watch a changelog, pricing or terms page and get its new Markdown when it changes.

Research feeds

Follow a topic across Google and fallback engines without re-reading old results.

Pricing