News search & categorization chatbot with Google News, SerpAPI, and OpenAI

🧑‍💻 Description

This workflow connects SerpApi with OpenAI inside n8n to automate Google News monitoring and analysis.

It’s built for market researchers, analysts, communications teams, and business leaders who need to stay on top of fast-changing news without wasting time scrolling through endless headlines. Instead of manually searching, this workflow automatically fetches news, groups it into meaningful categories, and recommends the most relevant articles.

Problem it solves:

• Reduces time spent manually monitoring news.
• Helps track competitors, industries, or emerging trends.
• Provides structured, actionable insights from unstructured headline feeds.

Disclaimer: this template can only be used on self-hosted installations.

📌 Use Cases

• Market Intelligence: Track industry-specific news to guide strategy.
• Competitor Monitoring: Automatically surface competitor mentions in the press.
• Research Support: Organize articles into categories for academic or professional projects.
• Executive Briefings: Deliver a curated daily digest to stakeholders.
• Trend Spotting: Detect recurring topics to understand where coverage is growing.

⚙️ Setup Instructions

Preconditions

• You need a self-hosted n8n instance (this template doesn’t run on n8n.cloud).
• A valid SerpApi account + API Key.
• An OpenAI API Key with billing enabled.
• Optional: Connected Slack, Email, or Google Sheets credentials if you plan to extend output.

1️⃣ Set Up SerpApi Connection

1. Create a free account at SerpApi
2. Copy your API Key from the dashboard
3. In n8n → Credentials → New → SerpApi
   • Paste your API Key → Save
4. In the workflow, select your SerpApi credential in the Google News Search node.

2️⃣ Set Up OpenAI Connection

1. Go to OpenAI Platform
2. Navigate to Billing and ensure your account has credits/funding
3. Copy your API Key into the OpenAI credentials in n8n

🧠 Workflow Breakdown

1. Chat Trigger → A user enters a search query (e.g., “EV market 2025”).
2. Google News Search (SerpApi) → Fetches the latest headlines for that query.
3. Split Out Links → Separates articles into individual items.
4. Aggregate Node → Merges article titles and links into a structured list.
5. OpenAI Agent → Summarizes, categorizes, and selects the most relevant article per category.
6. Response Output → Returns a clean, categorized digest with clickable links.

🎛️ Customization Guidance

• Adjust Categories: Change the OpenAI system prompt to return 3, 5, or 10 categories depending on the depth you want.
• Regional Focus: Use SerpApi’s filters (gl=us, hl=en) to restrict results by geography or language.
• Delivery Methods: Add Slack, Email, or Google Sheets nodes to automatically share the digest with your team.
• Automation Frequency: Add a Schedule Trigger to run daily, weekly, or at custom intervals.
• Extended Analysis: Modify the prompt to include sentiment analysis, top keywords, or executive summaries.
• Multi-Query Runs: Duplicate the SerpApi node to monitor multiple industries or competitors in one workflow.

💬 Example Q&A

Question: “What’s happening in renewable energy today?”
Response:

• Policy: “US expands solar subsidies” – [link]
• Innovation: “New battery breakthrough announced” – [link]
• Market Moves: “Wind energy stocks surge” – [link]
• Competition: “Shell invests in offshore projects” – [link]
• Sustainability: “Community solar initiatives expand” – [link]

📬 Contact

Need help customizing this template (e.g., tracking multiple industries, adding auto-delivery, or integrating dashboards)?

📧 [email protected]
🔗 Robert Breen
🌐 ynteractive.com