Live ranked Google News headlines as structured JSON through one get_top_trends call. No RSS parsing, no scraping, no Google News HTML cleanup.
Live data as of 2026-07-30
The Google News Top News API on Trends MCP returns a live ranked board of Google News headlines through get_top_trends with type Google News Top News. On July 30, 2026 at 2026-07-30T06:01:37Z, the first page returned 25 headlines and an offset page added 13 more, for 38 ranked rows in two calls. Growth follow-ups on the same day showed Federal Reserve interest rates up 20% over 7 days on google news while down 52% over 30 days, and Microsoft news volume up 10.1% over 7 days on 3,960 recent articles versus 3,595 a week earlier. The free plan covers 100 requests per month.
From the Trends MCP scan of July 30, 2026, the top 12 Google News Top News headlines were:
| Rank | Headline (publisher) |
|---|---|
| 1 | July 29, 2026 - Trump on intercepted Iranian attack and U.S. completing Iran strikes (CNN) |
| 2 | Senate panel delays vote on Blanche attorney general nomination as key Republicans withhold support (AP News) |
| 3 | Good riddance to the 'people mover' shuttles at Dulles Airport, travelers say (The Washington Post) |
| 4 | Jury in Lindsay Clancy trial hears ex-husband Patrick's 911 call after murders of 3 children (cbsnews.com) |
| 5 | Animal spillover? Lab leak? What the science says about the origins of COVID-19 (NPR) |
| 6 | Why did Anthony Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment? Senate hearing explained (Al Jazeera) |
| 7 | DOJ tapped never-used 'alien terrorist' court to deport mother of convicted ISIS supporter (Politico) |
| 8 | Seattle shooting charges: Bullets that killed 2 not from 15-year-old's ghost gun (The Seattle Times) |
| 9 | Camera Captures Last Sighting of Missing Mom Before Vanishing on Vacation (tmz.com) |
| 10 | Teenage Lifeguard Fights Intense Waves to Bring Boy to Safety (The New York Times) |
| 11 | Japan earthquake: Death toll rises to 28 as rescuers keep searching through extreme heat (BBC) |
| 12 | Saudi defense minister holds urgent meeting with Trump after Iraq strikes (Axios) |
Ranks 13 through 18 mixed disaster and markets: Southern Europe fires with 3 firefighter deaths (AP News), Ukraine procurement politics (Reuters), a divided Fed holding rates (The Washington Post), Wall Street closing down after the Fed decision (Reuters), Microsoft profit jumping 31% as Azure passed $100 billion (wsj.com), and Starbucks raising full-year outlook (CNBC). Offset 25 added rows 26 through 38, including Bruce Springsteen tributes (rollingstone.com), Yankees at White Sox pitching notes (Pinstripe Alley), NASA's Roman Space Telescope launch targeting August 30 (Space), and a measles report topping 2.3K U.S. cases (MassLive).
Live ranks answer what is on the board. Growth answers whether attention is still expanding. On July 30, 2026, Trends MCP get_growth returned these figures:
| Keyword | Source | 7D growth | 30D growth | Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Federal Reserve interest rates | google news | +20.0% (10 to 12) | -52.0% (25 to 12) | 3M +71.43% (7 to 12) |
| Microsoft | news volume | +10.1% | +28.65% | 3,960 vs 3,595 articles (7D); 3,070 baseline (30D) |
| Starbucks | google search | -7.55% (53 to 49) | -5.77% (52 to 49) | ~51.9M estimated search volume at index 49 |
| Japan earthquake | google news | 0.0% (1 to 1) | -96.43% (28 to 1) | Death toll 28 still on the board |
The Fed story shows a short-window rebound inside a 30-day cool-down. Microsoft news volume climbed on both 7-day and 30-day windows while the board carried the Azure $100 billion sales headline. Japan earthquake stayed on the board at rank 11 even after a 96.43% 30-day collapse in the google news index, a reminder that a high rank and a rising curve are different questions.
Two shapes cover most Google News workflows. get_top_trends with type Google News Top News returns the ranked board. get_growth with source google news or news volume measures whether a keyword pulled from those headlines is still climbing.
{
"mode": "get_top_trends",
"type": "Google News Top News",
"limit": 25,
"offset": 0
}
{
"mode": "get_growth",
"source": "google news",
"keyword": "Federal Reserve interest rates",
"percent_growth": ["7D", "30D", "3M"]
}
Pagination uses limit and offset. The July 30, 2026 session used limit 25 at offset 0 (25 rows) and limit 15 at offset 25 (13 rows). Type strings are exact: Google News Top News is correct; Google News RSS is not a valid Trends MCP type.
Google News HTML and unofficial RSS paths break when markup changes, and they rarely return a stable rank field. Trends MCP normalizes the board into [rank, headline] pairs with an as_of_ts stamp. One REST POST or MCP tool call replaces a scrape-plus-parse pipeline. For keyword history rather than the live board, use google news with get_time_series or get_growth instead of inventing ranks from search result pages.
Compared with building on Google's own public surfaces, the tradeoff is coverage versus structure. Trends MCP does not return full article bodies or licensed content. It returns the ranked headline list and, separately, keyword indexes. That is enough for alerting, editorial calendars, and AI agent context; it is not a full-text news archive. Broader Google Trends options sit on the Google Trends page and the Google Trends API pricing comparison.
Newsroom desks pull the board at fixed UTC hours to see which stories already cleared Google News ranking before assigning follow-ups. Market teams watch ranks 15 through 18 for Fed and earnings language, then call get_growth on the ticker or policy phrase. AI agents ground answers with a dated board instead of inventing "top headlines."
A short loop works well: 1 call for the top 25, optional second call with offset 25, then 2 to 4 growth calls on the keywords that matter to the desk. The July 30, 2026 sample used 2 board calls plus 4 growth calls and stayed well inside a Starter plan's 1,000 monthly requests.
Headline text can include publisher names, dates, and punctuation that need cleaning before display. Ranks move between scans; do not treat a single pull as a daily average. Growth indexes can sit near 1.0 for cold topics, so percentage moves look extreme when absolute attention is small. News volume article counts are better for absolute scale when the source returns them, as with Microsoft at 3,960 recent articles on the 7-day window.
Trends MCP pricing for planning: Free 100 requests/month, Starter $19 for 1,000, Pro $49 for 5,000, Business $199 for 25,000. See pricing and the free trends API comparison for side-by-side options. Confirm competitor pricing on vendor sites before quoting it in budgets.
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