The Code

Save the following code as a CGI script ["How to Run the Hacks" in the Preface] named sinker.cgi in your web site's cgi-bin directory.

TIP

This script doesn't require the Google API! Instead, it directly opens a Google search result URL.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# sinker.cgi
# Weight a specific keyword in a Google query.

use strict;

use CGI qw{:standard};

# Display the query form if both a query and sinker are not provided.
unless (param('query') and param('sinker')) {
  print
    header( ),
    start_html("Search Sinker"),
    h1("Search Sinker"),
    start_form(-method=>'GET'),
    'Query: ', textfield(-name=>'query'), p( ),
    'Sinker (word to weight): ', textfield(-name=>'sinker'), p( ),
    submit(-name=>'submit', -value=>'Search'), p( ),
    "You will be taken straight to a Google results page. Be sure to look in the Google 
query box at the top of the page to see how your query turned out.",
    end_form( ), p( );
}
else {
  # Normalize the sinker and prefix with a space.
  my($sinker) = param('sinker') =~ /^\s*(.+)\s*$/;
  $sinker = " $sinker";

  # Build the Google query URL.
  my $query = param('query') .  $sinker x ( 10 - (scalar split / /, param('query')) );

  # Webify the query.
  $query =~ s/([^a-zA-Z0-9 ])/"%".sprintf("%2.2x", unpack("C", ($1)))/eg;
  $query =~ tr/ /+/;

  # Redirect the browser to Google, sinker search in tow
  print redirect("http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=$query");
}