Using Google Web Service for "Google Search"

Sometimes, I wondered if I could search Google without using a browser. Then I found that Google has a web service which we can use for this purpose. Here is the sample client for Google Search Web Service.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import org.json.JSONObject;

public class SampleSearch {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
      //q=javacodingtutorial.blogspot.com - This is the string you want to search
      //userip=USERS-IP-ADDRESS - This gives the IP address of  the user 
 String temp = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&"
   + "q=javacodingtutorial.blogspot.com&userip=USERS-IP-ADDRESS";
  URL url = new URL(temp);
  URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
  String line;
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
    connection.getInputStream()));
  System.out.println(connection.getURL());
  System.out.println();
  while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
   builder.append(line);
  }
  JSONObject json = new JSONObject(builder.toString());
  System.out.println(json);
   }
}

This code will return Google Search Results in JSON objects.
Here is the sample output Download
But, there is a problem with this code if you want for than 4 results. Because this Webservice


returns only 4 results at a time. But, there is a solution to this problem as well. we have another one parameter which we can use. we can change the url to -
 https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=javacodingtutorial.blogspot.com&userip=USERS-IP-ADDRESS&start=0 this will return results with indexes 0,1,2,3.

Similarly if we use the URL - https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=javacodingtutorial.blogspot.com&userip=USERS-IP-ADDRESS&start=4 this will return results with indexes 4,5,6,7.

So, to return 100 results (you can want any other number), we will modify our code like this:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

import org.json.JSONObject;

public class SampleSearch {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
 String temp = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&"
   + "q=javacodingtutorial.blogspot.com&userip=USERS-IP-ADDRESS";
 for (int i = 0; i < 100; i = i + 4) {
  System.out.println("Time : "+i+"\n");
  URL url = new URL(temp + "&start="+i);
  URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
  connection.addRequestProperty("Referer", "www.facebook.com");
  String line;
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
    connection.getInputStream()));
  System.out.println(connection.getURL());
  System.out.println();
  while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
   builder.append(line);
  }
  JSONObject json = new JSONObject(builder.toString());
  System.out.println(json);
 }

  }
}

Using this code, we can search for as many result as we want using Google & Java together.

"The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values." -  William Ralph Inge