Google Hacks, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2. Advanced Web

If you’ve just arrived from Chapter 1 and think you have more than enough information to Google yourself silly, hold on to your hat. It’s time to put into high gear all you’ve learned about the ins and outs of Googling.

In this chapter, you’ll measure Google Mindshare, range farther across the Web, twist and recombine your queries, squeeze the last drop of results out of every search, and even go beyond the bounds of Google’s index—all without wearing out your fingers.

Because your computer will do the lion’s share of the work for you.

This chapter hacks Google programmatically. Through bite-sized programs, we’ll introduce you to the kind of trawling, crawling, and recombination that’s possible with just a few lines of code. And it’s all thanks to something called the Google API—that’s Application Programming Interface, or Google for computers.

In April 2002, Google introduced an alternate interface to the friendly search box on Google.com. It opened up its index to anyone with a little programming know-how and a reasonable amount of patience. Initially, this wasn’t much to write home about. Some of the earliest applications simply Googled and incorporated the results into a web page—so-called Google boxes [Hack #19]. But as more people experimented with the API, the variety of applications grew from the marginally interesting to the seriously useful. And so was born the book you’re holding in your hands.

This chapter, and the rest of this book, contain hacks ...