Analyze Trending YouTube Videos with Apify, OpenAI, and Google Sheets

⚙️ Trending YouTube Videos Research Workflow:

🧑‍💻 Author: [Leewei]

• Automates scraping trending videos based on a keyword, filters high-potential ones, analyzes thumbnails and transcripts with AI, generates optimized titles and outlines, and updates a Google Sheet for content ideas.

🚀 Steps to Connect:

1. Apify API Token

   • Sign up for a free account at Apify and generate your API token.
   • Paste the token into the two HTTP Request nodes (replace <token> in the Authorization header).
   • 💡 This enables scraping YouTube video data and transcripts—setup takes about 5 minutes.

2. OpenAI API Key

   • Go to OpenAI and generate your API key.
   • Add it to the credentials for the YouTube Title Generator , Analyze Thumbnail , and Outline Generator nodes.
   • 💡 Use models like GPT-4o-mini for thumbnail analysis and title/outline generation.

3. Google Sheets Credentials

   • Set up OAuth2 credentials in n8n for Google Sheets with access to your Drive.
   • Update the documentId in the Step 1 Results , Find Duplicate Entries , and Update Rows nodes to your own Google Sheet ID (clone the provided sheet if needed).
   • 💡 This stores filtered video data, AI-generated titles, and outlines—expect 10-15 minutes for auth setup.

4. (Optional) Customize Form Trigger

   • If deploying publicly, no changes needed—the form prompts for "Keyword or Topic" to start the search.
   • Test with a sample keyword like "AI automation" to see results in your sheet.