serply-search

Serply Search

Serply (https://serply.io) is a Google SERP API. It returns the ranked organic results for a keyword query, and exposes Google News and Google Scholar as separate endpoints. API reference: https://serply.io/docs

When to use Serply vs. Exa vs. WebSearch

Query shape	Use
"Companies building agent coordination layers"	Exa (conceptual, embedding match)
"Blogs that argue knowledge is not data"	Exa (argument-shape)
"What ranks on page 1 for bun sqlite orm"	Serply search (the ranking is the answer)
"Funding rounds for company X since June"	Serply news (named entity plus date)
"How heavily cited is paper Y"	Serply scholar (citation counts)
"What is the official Bun docs URL?"	WebSearch (one concrete lookup)

Exa ranks by embedding similarity, so it wins at "find me things shaped like this". Serply returns what Google actually ranks, which is what you want when position, recency, or citation weight is the thing being measured. A plain WebSearch is still the cheapest way to settle a single fact.

Step 1. Get the API key

# Via MCP tool (preferred, handles secret resolution)
mcp__agent-swarm__get-config(key="SERPLY_API_KEY", includeSecrets=true)

The value comes back at configs[0].value. Export to env or pass inline. Keys come from https://serply.io

Step 2. Web search

curl -sS 'https://api.serply.io/v1/search/?q=bun+sqlite+orm&num=10' \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $SERPLY_API_KEY" \
  -H 'User-Agent: agent-swarm/1.0'

Parameters go in the query string:

• q (required): URL-encoded keywords, not a natural-language description. Google operators pass straight through, so q=sqlite+site%3Abun.sh and tbs= date filters behave as they do in the browser.
• num: how many results to return. Honored up to 10 and clamped there, so page instead of asking for 20.

Response (trimmed):

{
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Use Drizzle ORM with Bun | Bun Guides",
      "description": "Drizzle is an ORM that supports both a SQL-like \"query builder\" API and an ORM-like Queries API.",
      "position": 1,
      "realPosition": 1,
      "result_type": "organic",
      "link": "https://bun.com/guides/ecosystem/drizzle"
    }
  ]
}