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Google Search for Local LLMs - No API Key Required. MCP server using headless Chromium via Playwright.

Project description

noapi-google-search-mcp

vincentkaufmann@protonmail.com

Give any LLM real Google search, vision, and OCR capabilities. No API key, no vision model needed.

Google Search, Google Lens + OpenCV object detection + local OCR for Local LLMs

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that gives your local LLM real Google search, browsing, vision, and text-reading abilities. Uses headless Chromium via Playwright for search, Google Lens for image identification, and RapidOCR for local text extraction. No Google API key, no Custom Search Engine setup, no usage limits - just real Google results.

Works with LM Studio, Claude Desktop, and any MCP-compatible client.

Why This Instead of API-Based Alternatives?

noapi-google-search-mcp API-based MCP servers
API key required No Yes (Google CSE API)
Cost Free Paid after 100 queries/day
Setup time pip install + go Create Google Cloud project, enable API, get key, configure CSE
Results quality Real Google results Custom Search Engine (different ranking)
JavaScript pages Renders them (Chromium) Cannot render JS
Google Search Built-in (with filters) Basic only
Google Shopping Built-in Not available
Google Flights Built-in Not available
Google Hotels Built-in Not available
Google Translate Built-in Separate API needed
Google Maps Built-in Not available
Google Weather Built-in Not available
Google Finance Built-in Not available
Google News Built-in Usually not available
Google Scholar Built-in Not available
Google Books Built-in Not available
Google Images Built-in Separate API needed
Google Lens Built-in (reverse image search) Not available
Object detection Built-in (OpenCV + Google Lens per object) Not available
Local OCR Built-in (RapidOCR, works offline) Not available
Google Trends Built-in Separate API needed
Page fetching Built-in visit_page tool Usually separate

Tools

google_search - Web Search

Search Google and get structured results with titles, URLs, and snippets.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Search query (required) "best python frameworks 2025"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5
time_range Filter by recency "past_hour", "past_day", "past_week", "past_month", "past_year"
site Limit to a domain "reddit.com", "stackoverflow.com", "github.com", "arxiv.org", "news.ycombinator.com"
page Results page (1-10, default 1) 2 for next page
language Language code "en", "de", "fr", "es", "ja", "zh"
region Country/region code "us", "gb", "de", "fr", "jp"

How your LLM uses it: The LLM automatically sees these parameters in the tool definition. When you ask "search Reddit for Python tips from the past week", it will call google_search(query="Python tips", site="reddit.com", time_range="past_week").


google_shopping - Product Search

Search Google Shopping for products with prices, stores, and ratings.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Product search query (required) "Sony WH-1000XM5"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

Returns: product name, price, store, and rating.


google_flights - Flight Search

Search Google Flights for flight options, prices, and travel times.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
origin Departure city or airport (required) "New York", "LAX"
destination Arrival city or airport (required) "London", "NRT"
date Departure date (optional) "March 15", "2025-03-15"
return_date Return date for round trips (optional) "March 22"

google_hotels - Hotel Search

Search for hotels and accommodation with prices and ratings.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Hotel search with location (required) "Paris", "Tokyo near Shibuya"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

google_translate - Translation

Translate text between languages using Google Translate.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
text Text to translate (required) "Hello, how are you?"
to_language Target language (required) "Spanish", "Japanese", "French"
from_language Source language (optional, auto-detected) "English", "German"

google_maps - Places Search

Search Google Maps for restaurants, businesses, and places with ratings, addresses, and reviews.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Place search query (required) "pizza near Central Park"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

google_weather - Weather Lookup

Get current weather conditions and forecast for any location worldwide.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
location City or location (required) "Dubai", "New York", "Tokyo"

Returns: temperature (°C/°F), condition, precipitation, humidity, wind, and multi-day forecast.


google_finance - Stock & Market Data

Look up stock prices, market data, and company information from Google Finance.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Stock ticker with exchange or company name (required) "AAPL:NASDAQ", "TSLA:NASDAQ"

Returns: current price, change, market info, key stats, and company description.


google_news - News Search

Search Google News for recent headlines with source and timestamp.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query News search query (required) "AI regulation"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

google_scholar - Academic Search

Search Google Scholar for papers, citations, and research.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Academic search query (required) "transformer attention mechanism"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

Returns: title, URL, authors, citation count, and snippet for each paper.


google_books - Book Search

Search Google Books for books, textbooks, and publications.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Book search query (required) "machine learning"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

google_images - Image Search

Search Google Images and get image URLs.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Image search query (required) "sunset over ocean"
num_results Number of results (1-10, default 5) 5

google_lens - Reverse Image Search

Identify objects, products, brands, landmarks, and text in images using Google Lens. Gives vision capabilities to text-only models.

Supports both public image URLs and local file paths, so LM Studio users can save images locally and pass the file path.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
image_source Image URL or local file path (required) "https://example.com/photo.jpg" or "/home/user/image.jpg"

Returns: identified object/product name, description, visual matches, text found in image, and related products with prices.


google_trends - Trends Lookup

Check Google Trends for topic interest, related topics, and related queries.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
query Topic to check trends for (required) "artificial intelligence"

google_lens_detect - Object Detection + Identification

Detect all objects in an image using OpenCV, crop each one, and identify them individually via Google Lens. Useful when an image contains multiple items and you want each identified separately.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
image_source Local file path to the image (required) "/home/user/photo.jpg"

Returns: per-object identification from Google Lens, including the original full image results.


ocr_image - Local OCR (no internet needed)

Extract text from images locally using RapidOCR (PaddleOCR models on ONNX Runtime). Runs entirely offline. Reads screenshots, documents, photos of signs, labels, receipts, or any image containing text.

Gives text-reading capabilities to text-only models without needing a vision model or internet.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
image_source Local file path to the image (required) "/home/user/screenshot.png"

Returns: extracted text sorted by position, with confidence scores.

Example output:

OCR Results for: /home/user/screenshot.png
Text regions found: 12

--- Extracted Text ---
NVIDIA-SMI 580.95.05  Driver Version: 580.95.05  CUDA Version: 13.0
GPU Name  Persistence-M  Bus-Id  Disp.A
NVIDIA GB10  On  00000000F:01:00.0

--- Detailed Results (with confidence) ---
[88%] NVIDIA-SMI 580.95.05
[88%] Driver Version: 580.95.05
[84%] CUDA Version: 13.0

list_images - Image Discovery

List image files in a directory so text-only models can discover and pass them to google_lens, google_lens_detect, or ocr_image. Default directory: ~/lens/.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
directory Folder to scan (optional, default ~/lens/) "/home/user/photos"

visit_page - Page Fetcher

Fetch any URL and extract readable text content. Use after search to read full articles.

Parameters:

Parameter Description Example
url Full URL to fetch (required) "https://example.com/article"

How Does the LLM Know About These Tools?

You don't need to teach the LLM anything. MCP automatically exposes all tool names, descriptions, and parameters to the model. The LLM picks the right tool and parameters automatically based on your request.

Sample Prompts

Here are example prompts you can type into LM Studio or Claude Desktop, and which tool the LLM will use:

Web Search

What you type Tool called Parameters used
"Search for the best Python web frameworks" google_search query
"Find Reddit discussions about home lab setups" google_search query + site="reddit.com"
"Search Stack Overflow for async Python examples" google_search query + site="stackoverflow.com"
"What's new in AI this week?" google_search query + time_range="past_week"
"Search Hacker News for posts about Rust" google_search query + site="news.ycombinator.com"
"Find GitHub repos for MCP servers" google_search query + site="github.com"
"Get page 2 of results for machine learning tutorials" google_search query + page=2
"Search for restaurants in Tokyo in Japanese" google_search query + language="ja" + region="jp"
"Find German news about the EU from the past month" google_search query + language="de" + time_range="past_month"

Shopping

What you type Tool called
"Find the cheapest MacBook Air" google_shopping
"Compare prices for Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones" google_shopping
"How much does a Nintendo Switch cost?" google_shopping
"Search for running shoes under $100" google_shopping

Flights

What you type Tool called
"Find flights from New York to London" google_flights
"Search for cheap flights from LA to Tokyo" google_flights
"Flights from San Francisco to Paris on March 15" google_flights
"How much are flights from Dubai to Bangkok?" google_flights

Hotels

What you type Tool called
"Find hotels in Paris for next weekend" google_hotels
"Search for cheap hotels in Tokyo" google_hotels
"Best hotels near Times Square New York" google_hotels
"Find 5-star hotels in Dubai" google_hotels

Translation

What you type Tool called
"Translate 'hello world' to Japanese" google_translate
"How do you say 'thank you' in French?" google_translate
"Translate this to Spanish: The weather is nice today" google_translate
"What does 'Guten Morgen' mean in English?" google_translate

Maps & Places

What you type Tool called
"Find Italian restaurants near Times Square" google_maps
"Where are the best coffee shops in Berlin?" google_maps
"Search for hotels in Tokyo" google_maps
"Find EV charging stations in San Francisco" google_maps
"What are the top-rated gyms in London?" google_maps

Weather

What you type Tool called
"What's the weather in Dubai?" google_weather
"Is it going to rain in London today?" google_weather
"What's the temperature in New York?" google_weather
"Weather forecast for Tokyo this week" google_weather

Finance & Stocks

What you type Tool called
"What's Apple's stock price?" google_finance
"How is Tesla stock doing?" google_finance
"Look up NVIDIA market cap" google_finance
"How is the S&P 500 doing today?" google_finance

News

What you type Tool called
"What are today's top headlines?" google_news
"Any recent news about the stock market?" google_news
"What happened in the Japan election?" google_news

Academic Research

What you type Tool called
"Find papers on transformer attention mechanisms" google_scholar
"Look up academic research about CRISPR" google_scholar
"What does the research say about intermittent fasting?" google_scholar

Books

What you type Tool called
"Find books about machine learning" google_books
"Search for books by Stephen King" google_books
"What are the best books on Python programming?" google_books

Images

What you type Tool called
"Show me images of the Northern Lights" google_images
"Find diagrams of neural network architecture" google_images

Reverse Image Search

What you type Tool called
"What is this product? https://example.com/photo.jpg" google_lens
"Identify this image: /home/user/photos/device.jpg" google_lens
"What brand is this? [image URL or file path]" google_lens
"Read the text in this image: https://..." google_lens

Trends

What you type Tool called
"What's trending in tech right now?" google_trends
"Is Python more popular than JavaScript?" google_trends

Object Detection

What you type Tool called
"Detect and identify all objects in /home/user/photo.jpg" google_lens_detect
"What are all the items in this photo? /path/to/image.jpg" google_lens_detect

OCR (Text Extraction)

What you type Tool called
"Read the text in this image: /home/user/screenshot.png" ocr_image
"OCR this document: /home/user/receipt.jpg" ocr_image
"What does this label say? /home/user/photo.jpg" ocr_image
"Extract text from /home/user/document.png" ocr_image

Page Reading

What you type Tool called
"Read this article for me: https://..." visit_page
"What does this page say? https://..." visit_page

Installation

Quick Install (pipx - recommended)

pipx install noapi-google-search-mcp
playwright install chromium

This puts noapi-google-search-mcp on your PATH so you can use it directly.

Install in a Virtual Environment

If you don't have pipx, install in a dedicated venv:

python3 -m venv ~/.local/share/noapi-google-search-mcp
~/.local/share/noapi-google-search-mcp/bin/pip install noapi-google-search-mcp
~/.local/share/noapi-google-search-mcp/bin/playwright install chromium

Configuration

LM Studio

Add to ~/.lmstudio/mcp.json:

If installed with pipx (command is on PATH):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-search": {
      "command": "noapi-google-search-mcp",
      "env": {
        "PYTHONUNBUFFERED": "1"
      }
    }
  }
}

If installed in a venv (use the full path):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-search": {
      "command": "~/.local/share/noapi-google-search-mcp/bin/noapi-google-search-mcp",
      "env": {
        "PYTHONUNBUFFERED": "1"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-search": {
      "command": "noapi-google-search-mcp"
    }
  }
}

If installed in a venv, use the full path to the binary instead.

As a CLI

noapi-google-search-mcp

Or:

python -m google_search_mcp

Development

git clone https://github.com/VincentKaufmann/noapi-google-search-mcp.git
cd google-search-mcp
pip install -e .
playwright install chromium

License

MIT

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