Alternatives to the Google Search API

Question

If someone searches for a keyword on our website, we currently pull in Google's search results. We have done this using Google's standard search API with no real issues so far.

However, we noticed that a number of searches weren't going through. So it turns out, that Google is phasing out this API and pushing people to a different API:

https://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html#Pricing

The new API is more limited than what we've worked with, and also costs a lot of money given our usage.

We've recently also looked into Yahoo! Boss:

http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/

Does anyone have any suggestions on other APIs or providers to use here?

As I mentioned, we're not looking for a freebie but maybe something with more competitive pricing. If you can share experience using Boss or Bing, that would be great too.

Just to make sure: I'm not looking for a software solution (e.g. Lucene and related, Elastic Search, etc.).

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 02 '12 at 09:46

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There is free Bing search API for this.

answered Apr 02 '12 at 09:46

amitamb

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This is not free anymore is it? Or am I just not getting to the right spot...? – Christian Romeni Jan 03 '16 at 13:40

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 19 '11 at 21:33

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Dont know if there is already a professional support, but yacy serves an API ( http://yacy.net/en/API.html ) and you can easily influence the re-crawling of sites, if you set up an own yacy node.

answered Apr 19 '11 at 21:33

Flyingmana

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In my experience, yacy seems still very immature, providing prevalently irrelevant or unfocussed results. – davide Mar 16 '15 at 03:51

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 12 '16 at 23:55

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We went ahead and used Yahoo! Boss for now.

UPDATE: YAHOO BOSS SEARCH API will discontinue on March 31, 2016.

edited Mar 12 '16 at 23:55

Khaled Awad

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answered Jun 27 '11 at 19:40

Till

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Yahoo! Boss is no longer free. So what could be the free alternative? – Muhammad Imran Tariq Jul 04 '12 at 09:05
We were not looking for free since we paid for the Google Search API already. I don't know if there is anything that is free. The pricing on Boss is very reasonable though. – Till Jul 06 '12 at 12:13

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 17 '11 at 03:37

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You could try indextank. It's a hosted, real-time search solution.

answered Jul 17 '11 at 03:37

dbuthay

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Interesting link, but more or less a search engine I could plug into. I needed something like Google Search or Yahoo! Boss. Still interesting, so I voted. – Till Jul 18 '11 at 14:00
Do you want results from sites you control, right? Or from any site / domain? I'm working on a GoogleCustomSearch-like solution using indextank. You just add a link to a js on your templates, and I'll index your site. After that, you just add [indextank-jquery](http://github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery) to your site, and you're good to go – dbuthay Jul 20 '11 at 00:32
No, I want(ed) web search - nothing like `inurl:example.org`. – Till Jul 20 '11 at 14:53

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 24 '13 at 17:18

0

If you are looking for a java-library, have a look at this. The library is basically a wrapper for the Faroo search-api which is for free.

edited Jan 24 '13 at 17:18

akjoshi

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answered Jan 24 '13 at 16:52

Yrr

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Add a link to that search API and some info to make your answer worthwhile. :) – Till Jan 28 '13 at 18:40
With Faroo, your API key is restricted to the IP address you specify during registration. – Uncaught Exception Nov 03 '15 at 04:40

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 07 '13 at 03:02

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Gigablast offers a web search api that is less expensive than the major search players, but still over a billion pages. More info here:

http://www.gigablast.com/searchfeed.html

answered Jun 07 '13 at 03:02

jman

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Alternatives to the Google Search API

6 Answers6