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The Google Web Search (SOAP) API was deprecated in November of last year, having been discouraged for a long time previously.

I noticed there exists the new Google Custom Search API, but this seems only for creating site-specific custom searches. So, is there currently any API solution for searching the entire web? Either using Google Custom Search or some other API?

Noldorin
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    I encountered this problem previously, after a quick search I couldn't find what I was looking for on google so I switched over and used Bing's search API. If you do switch I have to say I liked the Bing API, found it very easy to use (especially if your using .NET). – AndrewC Feb 25 '11 at 19:09
  • @AndyC: Yeah, I think I may just do that. – Noldorin Feb 25 '11 at 19:43
  • You can try creating your own [google scraper with python](http://blog.goog.io/web/scraping/2019/12/30/how-to-scrape-google-with-python.html) or you can use a third [party google search api](https://rapidapi.com/apigeek/api/google-search3) –  Jan 01 '20 at 02:22

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Unfortunately, your options are now very limited. You can either use the Bing API (which is not known to be too reliable and often has different results compared to a regular Bing search) or try Yahoo Boss (paid)

Gaurav Gupta
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  • Yeah, I suspected this. Kind of sucks. There's always screen-scraping I guess! Thanks for the suggestions anyway. Maybe if Bing improves... – Noldorin Aug 04 '11 at 01:53
  • I did a little research into **free web search APIs** in [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/8666532/445073). You may find some useful alternative there. – Day Dec 29 '11 at 15:39
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Actually, the custom search API will do what you want -

After initially creating your custom search engine, you CAN go back into the control panel / websites link on the left side, and just remove the domain that you were forced to enter when you created the custom search engine.

Once that's done, bingo! you're searching everything, instead of just a site: search

Scott Hendison
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