Menu Close

How to set up automated queries to google

Write a script performing HTTP requests against www.google.com and parse the SERPs (which are plain normal HTML pages) for the information (mostly URLs, but caution: Google delivers tracking URLs which themselves redirect to the search result itself.) you wish to know.

automated queries to google

The only caveat: When Google thinks there’s a mass query from some IP address going on, it will display a captcha page instead of the SERP. Here you will have to add some code which generates an interrupt once such a page appears and launches the browser so that you can solve the captcha.

Google’s Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google.

Sending automated queries consumes resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries. In addition to rank checking, other types of automated access to Google without permission are also a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines and Terms of Service.

Bots scraping Google results is a big issue for Google. In July 2016, Gary Illyes revealed in an interview with Woj Kwasi that 70% of all search queries are coming from bots! That’s costing Google billions of dollars for search queries they don’t even want to answer.

Google has always been active against webmasters who are using automated queries to scrape the results. There’s a funny story in the excellent book “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59”. The story is about Ray Sidney, who used to be “Google’s first line of defense against webmasters who pummeled Google with automated queries.”