Enhanced Target Matching for Google Organic SERP API: New Crawl Control Parameters

We’ve enhanced the stop_crawl_on_match feature in the Google Organic SERP API with three powerful new parameters that give you precise control over when and where to stop crawling, further optimizing your API usage.

What’s new

We’ve added three new parameters to the Google Organic SERP API that work alongside stop_crawl_on_match to give you granular control over target matching:

• target_search_mode – choose whether to stop crawling at the first target domain or wildcard found, or require all targets to be found;
• find_targets_in – specify which SERP element types to check for matches (e.g., only organic results);
• ignore_targets_in – exclude specific SERP element types from target matching (e.g., ignore paid ads).

How it works

You can add these new parameters to your API request alongside stop_crawl_on_match as shown in the example below:

"stop_crawl_on_match": [
  {
    "language_name": "English",
    "location_name": "United States",
    "keyword": "seo software",
    "stop_crawl_on_match": [
      {
        "match_value": "dataforseo.com",
        "match_type": "with_subdomains"
      },
      {
        "match_value": "ahrefs.com",
        "match_type": "domain"
      }
    ],
    "target_search_mode": "all",
    "find_targets_in": [
      "organic",
      "featured_snippet"
    ],
    "ignore_targets_in": [
      "paid"
    ]
  }
]

Parameter details

1. target_search_mode accepts two values:

• any (default) – the crawl stops when any single target is found;
• all – the crawl stops only when all specified targets are found.

2. find_targets_in – lets you specify an array of SERP elements to check for targets. Possible elements: organic, paid, local_pack, featured_snippet, events, google_flights, images, jobs, knowledge_graph, local_service, map, scholarly_articles, third_party_reviews, twitter.

3. ignore_targets_in – allows you to exclude specific element types from target matching using the same values as above.

Note: find_targets_in and ignore_targets_in can’t contain identical element types.

How it helps

These new parameters allow you to manage SERP crawling more efficiently. For example, you can:

• Focus on organic only: Use "find_targets_in": ["organic"] to track targets only in organic results, ignoring paid ads or other SERP features;
• Track multiple competitors: Set "target_search_mode": "all" to ensure the crawl continues until you’ve found all competitor positions;
• Exclude irrelevant elements: Use ignore_targets_in to skip checking for targets in images, videos, or other elements that aren’t relevant to your analysis.

Combine these parameters with depth, max_crawl_pages, and other SERP API parameters to maximize the flexibility and cost efficiency of your rank tracking workflows.

Get started

Ready to take your rank tracking precision to the next level? Check out the updated Google Organic SERP API documentation for comprehensive details.