What are the alternatives now that the Google web search API has been deprecated? [closed]

Answer 1

There's a note on top of the docs:

Note: The Google Web Search API has been officially deprecated as of November 1, 2010. It will continue to work as per our deprecation policy, but the number of requests you may make per day will be limited. Therefore, we encourage you to move to the new Custom Search API.

The deprecation policy says that they will continue to run the API for 3 years. So if you already have an application that uses the old API, you don't have to rush to change things just yet. If you're writing a new application, use the Custom Search API. See my answer here for how to do this in Python, but the idea's the same for any language.

Answer 2

You can create "everywhere" custom search engine right from the Google Custom Search homepage ( http://www.google.com/cse/ ). You should just click 'advanced', during adding new engine. There you can provide Schema.org site type. 'Thing' is most generic type, which covers all the web.

Answer 3

Yes, Google Custom Search has now replaced the old Search API, but you can still use Google Custom Search to search the entire web, although the steps are not obvious from the Custom Search setup.

To create a Google Custom Search engine that searches the entire web:

1. From the Google Custom Search homepage ( http://www.google.com/cse/ ), click Create a Custom Search Engine.
2. Type a name and description for your search engine.
3. Under Define your search engine, in the Sites to Search box, enter at least one valid URL (For now, just put www.anyurl.com to get past this screen. More on this later ).
4. Select the CSE edition you want and accept the Terms of Service, then click Next. Select the layout option you want, and then click Next.
5. Click any of the links under the Next steps section to navigate to your Control panel.
6. In the left-hand menu, under Control Panel, click Basics.
7. In the Search Preferences section, select Search the entire web but emphasize included sites.
8. Click Save Changes.
9. In the left-hand menu, under Control Panel, click Sites.
10. Delete the site you entered during the initial setup process.

Now your custom search engine will search the entire web.

Pricing

• Google Custom Search gives you 100 queries per day for free.
• After that you pay $5 per 1000 queries.
• There is a maximum of 10,000 queries per day.

Source: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json-api/v1/overview#Pricing

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• The search quality is much lower than normal Google search (no synonyms, "intelligence" etc.)
• It seems that Google is even planning to shut down this service completely.

Answer 4

I have just come across this from Common Crawl.

http://www.commoncrawl.org/

Might be the answer we are all looking for!!

Answer 5

You could just send them through like a browser does, and then parse the html, that is what I have always done, even for things like Youtube.

Answer 6

Gigablast offers a cheap web search API: http://www.gigablast.com/searchfeed.html