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YouTube · Google Sheets Guide

Search YouTube for Keywords and Import Results Into a Google Sheet

2026-05-14
5 min read

The Scenario

You're a content strategist doing a keyword gap analysis. You have 15 target keywords in column A of a research sheet — phrases like "Excel tutorial beginner" and "Google Sheets pivot table" — and you need to see what's already ranking on YouTube for each one before you propose new content. Your manager wants the brief by Thursday.

The bad version:

  • Search YouTube for keyword 1, open a new browser tab, manually note the top 5 video titles and channels in the sheet
  • Realize you need view counts too, click into each video, come back, add the number
  • After 4 keywords and 20 videos, your sheet has inconsistent formatting, two videos have been listed twice, and you forgot to note the video IDs you'd need to analyze them later
  • Give up on getting all 15 keywords done and present an incomplete brief

A content gap analysis built on 4 out of 15 keywords is not a content gap analysis.

The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI

SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Google Sheet. It reads each keyword from column A, runs a YouTube search for each one, and writes the results into the sheet in structured columns.

For each search query in column A, search YouTube and write the top 10 video results into this sheet with columns for query, video ID, title, channel name, and view count

What You Get

  • 10 rows per keyword, 150 rows total for 15 keywords
  • Column A: the source query (repeated for each result row)
  • Column B: YouTube video ID
  • Column C: video title
  • Column D: channel name
  • Column E: view count at time of search

What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready

You also want to filter out results from your own channel

For each search query in column A, search YouTube for the top 10 results — exclude any results from the channel named [Your Channel Name] — write query, video ID, title, channel name, and view count into this sheet

Some keywords need results filtered to videos published in the last 12 months only

For each search query in column A where column B says "recent", search YouTube for the top 10 results published in the last 12 months and write query, video ID, title, channel name, published date, and view count into this sheet

You want to add a column showing how many results per keyword have more than 100K views

For each search query in column A, search YouTube for the top 10 results and write them into this sheet with query, video ID, title, channel name, and view count — then add a summary row per keyword group showing how many of the 10 results have more than 100,000 views

You want a single pivot-style view showing the highest-performing competitor per keyword

For each search query in column A, search YouTube and return only the single top result by view count — write query, video ID, title, channel name, and view count into one row per keyword

Fifteen keywords. Fifteen rows. Best competitor per query, cleanly laid out.

Try It

Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your keyword research sheet — paste your target queries into column A and ask SheetXAI to pull the top results for each. See also fetching YouTube trending videos or the YouTube hub.

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