Getting links of google search results

Question

How can I search on google and then get the links of results(programmatically)? And please give me sample of source code. Thank you so much!

Answer 1

You can use the Google REST API, as described here: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/using_rest#WorkingResults

The result can be in JSON format, which you can parse to get the links.

This is an example request:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key=INSERT-YOUR-KEY&cx=013036536707430787589:_pqjad5hr1a&q=flowers&alt=json

Now you get a JSON as described. You can parse the JSON either with a JSON library, such as Jackson (recommended!), or you just "grep" through it using a regular expression:

    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new StringReader(resultJson));

    Pattern regex = Pattern.compile(".*\"link\": \"(.*)\",");
    Collection<String> links = new ArrayList<String>();
    String line = null;
    while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
        Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(line);
        if (matcher.matches()) {
            String link = matcher.group(1);
            links.add(link);
        }
    }