Automate niche research with Wikipedia, GPT-4o-mini, and Google Sheets

Overview This n8n template automates the process of researching niche topics. It searches for a topic on Wikipedia, scrapes the relevant page using ScrapeOps, extracts the history or background section, and uses AI to generate a concise summary and timeline. The results are automatically saved to Google Sheets for easy content planning.

Who is this for? - Content Creators: Quickly gather background info for videos or articles. - Marketers: Research niche markets and product histories. - Educators/Students: Generate timelines and summaries for study topics. - Researchers: Automate the initial data gathering phase.

What problems it solves - Time Consumption: Manually reading and summarizing Wikipedia pages takes time. - Blocking: Scraping Wikipedia directly can sometimes lead to IP blocks; ScrapeOps handles this. - Unstructured Data: Raw HTML is hard to use; this workflow converts it into a clean, structured format (JSON/CSV).

How it works 1. Define Topic: You set a keyword in the workflow. 2. Locate Page: The workflow queries the Wikipedia API to find the correct page URL. 3. Smart Scraping: It uses the [ScrapeOps Proxy API](https://scrapeops.io/docs/n8n/proxy-api/) to fetch the page content reliably. 4. Extraction: A code node intelligently parses the HTML to find "History", "Origins", or "Background" sections. 5. AI Processing: GPT-4o-mini summarizes the text and extracts key dates for a timeline. 6. Storage: The structured data is appended to a Google Sheet.

Setup steps (~ 5-10 minutes) 1. ScrapeOps Account: - Register for a free API key at [ScrapeOps](https://scrapeops.io/app/register/n8n). - Configure the ScrapeOps Scraper node with your API key. 2. OpenAI Account: - Add your OpenAI credentials to the Message a model node. 3. Google Sheets: - Create a Google Sheet. You can duplicate this [Template Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P0wZ449wVNndhSa6cJtK3VA3Aulv1k18zdpwWYY13gE/edit?gid=0gid=0) (copy the headers). - Connect your Google account to the Append row in sheet node and select your new sheet.

Pre-conditions - An active ScrapeOps account. - An OpenAI API key (or another LLM credential). - A Google account for Sheets access.

Disclaimer This template uses ScrapeOps as a community node. You are responsible for complying with Wikipedia's Terms of Use, robots directives, and applicable laws in your jurisdiction. Scraping targets may change at any time; adjust render/scroll/wait settings and parsers as needed. Use responsibly for legitimate business purposes.