Excel Spreadsheet Automation on SerpApi Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for SerpApi provides formulas that can query SerpApi data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search SerpApi data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the SerpApi data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to SerpApi data, separated by semicolons.

  Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the SerpAPI Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\SerpAPI.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for SerpAPI (see below).

  SerpAPI API Profile Settings

  SerpAPI uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

  1. Sign in to your SerpAPI account at https://serpapi.com
  2. Navigate to the API Key page at https://serpapi.com/manage-api-key
  3. Copy your private API key

  After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

  Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

  • APIKey: Set this to your SerpAPI private API key.
• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search SerpApi data, such as SearchQuery.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM AmazonSearch WHERE SearchQuery = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)


3. Change the filter to change the data.