I'm creating a sample app that will take a query from user and will return the URL result returned from Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. Does Google expose this functionality through their API? How to access this?
It seems that Google change their I'm feeling lucky url.
A workaround is to use https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ducky+github+foo+bar+foobar
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ducky+YOUR_URL_ENCODED_QUERY
There is nothing magic about Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" functionality. It simply picks the first result of the search. So, however you're using the api, you can just select the first result as well.
Furthermore, you can use this format for a URL in order to hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" result of Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=my+keywords+for+search&btnI
Deprecated You could use the Google API which is probably the best way to do it but will require more work
api docs here https://developers.google.com/web-search/docs/
No longer working or you can go to this url with your seach query:
http://www.google.com/webhp#q=your+search+query+here&btnI
be sure you add &btnI to the end otherwise it wont redirect
Update 2014
The above URL stopped working and yes the search API is depreciated, however there are always workaround. If you really have to you can still use a simple get request on the following URL:
https://www.google.com/search?q=your+search+query+here&btnI=
with of course your+search+query+here replaced with a URL encoded string.
Related
So, I've spent about 2 hours trying to get the I'm Feeling Lucky URL to work. It seems the URL doesn't like the periods in the search parameter, so does anyone have any potential tricks?
Search Value= 40.840.1/8Z
The first result in a regular Google search is the correct page.
Here's what I've tried:
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40.840.1/8Z
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40.840.1%2F8Z
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40%2E840%2E1/8Z
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40%2E840%2E1%2F8Z
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40%2F840%2F1%2F8Z
(That one was actually pretty close)
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I&q=40%20840%201%208Z
And all of the above surrounded in quotes (%22)
The problem is that the I'm Feeling Lucky aspect doesn't work. It finds the correct results, it just doesn't navigate to the first result. I'm open to alternatives besides the I'm Feeling Lucky URL parameters as well.
I'm trying to implement this into a .NET application that provides employees with resource information, which is best received from the manufacturer's website(s). The trick is that the resources are from many different suppliers and the links need to be somewhat automatic. Basically I don't whomever manages the software to update these links. To navigate, I'm simply using the Process.Start("http://www.example.com/") command which uses the default browser to navigate to the address.
This post helped a lot by the way.
I wasn't able to get any closer than your closest one.
But if it helps, here's an alternative way of writing the "I'm feeling lucky" URL.
http://google.com/search?q=haimer+usa+40%2F840%2F1%2F8Z&btnI
What I did to find the right url is to navigate to google.com. After this I turned my internet connection off. I entered the search details and pressed submit. You can now see the url in the address bar, but it doesn't redirect you to the first result. You can now copy the url and see how google treats your dots and other weird characters.
So to recap:
Go to google.com
Turn your internet connection off
Enter search term
Press 'I'm feeling lucky'
Copy the url from the address bar
You can create a google custom search engine of your own, and either exclude certain sites or include specific sites only, use http://cse.google.com to do this.
There is a SO tag for google custom search
I'm a newbie at stackoverflow so please be patient with me :)
I'm trying to get access with the Google Custom Search API.
But I get return that I can't understand.
My query is like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?&key=********&q=red%2Bsox&cx=**********&start=0&num=10&cr=countryCA&lr=lang_fr&client=google-csbe&output=xml_no_dtd
And the result I get is this?
string '{"error": {"errors": [{"domain": "global","reason": "invalid","message": "Invalid Value"}],"code": 400,"message": "Invalid Value"}}' (length=172)
What am I doing wrong?
I want the result from Google to appear.
Thanks in advance :)
You don't have a cx.
Take a look at this answer
What happens is because this api is used mostly for adding a search option
for your site you have to specify you custom search engine (e.g. search only your site).
When you want this to search the web by code you need to do the above. Add a fake
site (where you would add your search textbox), configure it (search the web, or your site, or whatever else) and then delete the fake site
Update
Oh god, i just saw that. Sorry. Well the problem is that you start with 0. Valid is 1. Change start=0 with start=1 and i think you would be good to go. Take a look at this for valid values for the start parameter official page
I am currently working on a Flattr plugin for a popular open-source RSS reader (tiny tiny RSS).
I am using the lookup API for the first time and am unsure why I am getting mixed results.
So I'm unsure if I use the API correctly and want to confirm with you experts if I got something basic wrong.
First, let's see if I can come up with an API call that looks up a thing successfully. I look at the Flattr page of thing 1066706 (I can't post the whole URL here as SO only allows me two URLs for this whole post). On that page, I find the official URL which Flattr stores for that thing and look that up with the API:see here
This returns {"type":"thing","resource":"https:\/\/api.flattr.com\/rest\/v2\/things\/1066706", ... so that's good.
But it seems this method is not a sure way to test if things exist. Here is an example that doesn't work: I open the Flattr page of thing e7579b349cb7b319b28d883cd4064e1e.
That URL I find on that page is indeed the URL of that article and I don't see any other URL it might have. I look that up in the same way as above:check this
Alas, I get {"message":"not_found","description":"No thing was found"}
(I also tried both of these with encoded URLs, but got the same result. I figured this is easier to read for you.)
So, why would that second thing not be found? Thanks for any enlightenment.
The id "e7579b349cb7b319b28d883cd4064e1e" is not a real thing id but a hash that identifies a temporary thing for a not yet submitted thing - it's part of Flattr's autosubmit functionality: http://developers.flattr.net/auto-submit/
So the system is very correct in telling you that a thing for that URL doesn't exist - someone would need to flattr that thing for it to become submitted for real and created in the system with a real id to it.
(Just for reference - for some URL:s, like Twitter URL:s, Flattr can actually answer that the URL is flattrable even though it can't find it in the system: {"message": "flattrable", "description": "Thing is flattrable "} That way you can now that it is possible to flattr that thing without you having to use any kind of flattr-button/url supplied by the author to be able to flattr the URL)
Also - if you don't know it yet then for a RSS reader you should primarily be looking for rel-payment links to find out whether an entry is flattrable or not, see http://developers.flattr.net/feed/ and http://relpayment.com/
I am using Google's custom search API, I make an HTTP request to a URL that looks like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key=<my-key>&cref=&num=10&q=how+can+i+do+htis
if you search for "how can i do htis" on Google you are told "Showing results for how can i do this", and give you some results (call them result set A)
but if you use the API to search for the misspelled string, you get different results than those of A... Searching with a correctly spelled string gives you result A, which matches the ordinary search service on Google
Is there a way to search directly using the suggested string? I want to use the API I can't afford implementing a spell checker myself that can also correct people names and everything
I think what you want to do is possible using the spelling suggestions of Google. This is part of the xml-results returned by your query.
See API here.
I'm writing an application that analyses search engine results.
With the Google Search API now being depreciated and limited to 1000 queries/day they are forcing developers to move to the AJAX APIs and to use the Custom Search API to do a Google search.
The thing is I don't need a Custom Search, I need a general search not one that is filtered by site; OK maybe filtered by USA/UK (Google.com/Google.co.uk).
Does anyone know how to just do a regular Google search using the AJAX APIs? Is the Custom Search the right thing to be using?
I don't want to hit the 1000/day limit using the old service but this is exactly what I need.
I did find: How do I create a CSE that searches the entire web?
http://www.google.com/support/customsearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1210656
But by the sounds of it this will distort the search results.
Thank you.
OK. Here's how I think it is done.
Create a Custom Search Engine.
Add a site such as *.com When this is created go to the Advanced tab
and download the context xml.
Remove the Background Label associated with the site.
Upload the XML to replace the previous context.
This seems to work just fine and is returning the same values as far as I can see.
Yes, you are right *in theory, and this should let you get 100 results a day on the fly. Just this Saturday though, Google confirmed how here -
(* so far though, we can't get it working...)