Thursday, August 17, 2006

Google Suggest API

Wow, I wasn’t aware that Google Suggest has a nice REST API delivering the auto-completion data as XML*. The URL takes the form of ...

google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=microsoft

... where “microsoft” can be replaced by any other word. For example, for above URL we get:

• microsoft antispyware
• microsoft.com
• microsoft spyware
• microsoft word
• (and so on, along with individual result page counts)

You can give this a try below:

This doesn’t seem to be an official API though, meaning future support might be flaky. Then again, installed Google Toolbars around the world seem to make use of this service, so Google also can’t just change it. In this context, also take a look at Yahoo’s Related Suggestions service (a real API).

*Note the feature isn’t new...

[Thanks Tony Ruscoe for the find.]

Google Suggest API by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (5)

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