obviously you can win any search by just make the name quoted

"New York Times" -> "New York Times" -> works

Yes, but you have to enter a short(er) query. I think it's interesting to define a function like:
L(site)=the length of the shortest Google query that leads to the site (the site is the top result)

Of course, Google's results change, but you can compute an average.

http://209.51.152.154/~dailyrss/search/index.php?try=120

OK – the question then is now, Is it a violation of the Google TOS to be doing automated searches out the back end, from the server.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/terms_of_service.html

" No Automated Querying

You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google. Note that "sending automated queries" includes, among other things:

* using any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage "ranks" on Google for various queries;
* "meta-searching" Google; and
* performing "offline" searches on Google.

"

If there's a way around it I'd like to know since I have thought of service that will do something like this...

Though now that I think about it, you could use the API and do a limited number of searches