Google Surf MCP: Free Google Search MCP with PDF Handling and Tiered Extraction

Google Surf MCP is a free MCP server for Google search and URL extraction that actually works — the author reports testing 6 free MCPs, all of which failed. It replaces the usual search MCP + fetch MCP combo with a single tool set that also auto-handles academic PDFs (arXiv, bioRxiv, Nature, OpenReview, NeurIPS, JMLR, PMLR, Springer, PubMed→PMC).

Key Features

• 4 tools: search (SERP only), search_parallel (N concurrent queries), extract(url, mode?) (full/abstract/metadata), search_extract(query, mode?) (defaults to abstract)
• Tiered extraction: mode: "abstract" returns ~1500 chars per result for cheap relevance triage before paying for full bodies. A 5-result survey costs ~7.5k chars instead of 40k.
• PDF detection: via Content-Type, %PDF magic, citation_pdf_url meta, and per-domain rules.
• Reliability: multi-strategy SERP parser with geometric verification (drops sponsored/knowledge panel/sidebar), SSRF guard (env-locked private/loopback block, DNS rebinding defense, per-hop redirect validation), 25MB fetch ceiling, malformed PDFs contained as error.
• Auto CAPTCHA recovery: when CAPTCHA fires, a visible Chrome window opens for human solving, then retries. The profile's reputation with Google is preserved.
• No API key, no proxies, no solver.

Stack and Speed

• Stack: TypeScript, Playwright + stealth, Readability, Turndown, unpdf. ~900 LOC.
• Speed (1Gbps): sequential ~1.5s/q (warm), 4 parallel ~2s wall, 10 parallel ~5s wall.

Example Usage

search_extract("latest AI research papers", mode: "abstract")

Returns abstracts of top results, letting an agent triage relevance before calling extract(url, mode: "full") on the winner.

Who it's for: Developers building AI agents that need reliable, free web search and extraction without external API keys or paid services.