Alternatives to the Google Search API [closed]

C

6

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.).

Caroche answered 19/4, 2011 at 21:1 Comment(0)

C

2

We went ahead and used Yahoo! Boss for now.

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

Caroche answered 27/6, 2011 at 19:40 Comment(2)

Yahoo! Boss is no longer free. So what could be the free alternative? – Heritor 4/7, 2012 at 9:5

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. – Caroche 6/7, 2012 at 12:13

C

5

There is free Bing search API for this.

Cardoon answered 2/4, 2012 at 9:46 Comment(1)

This is not free anymore is it? Or am I just not getting to the right spot...? – Topsyturvy 3/1, 2016 at 13:40

G

2

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.

Gunzburg answered 19/4, 2011 at 21:33 Comment(1)

In my experience, yacy seems still very immature, providing prevalently irrelevant or unfocussed results. – Casuist 16/3, 2015 at 3:51

C

2

We went ahead and used Yahoo! Boss for now.

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

Caroche answered 27/6, 2011 at 19:40 Comment(2)

Yahoo! Boss is no longer free. So what could be the free alternative? – Heritor 4/7, 2012 at 9:5

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. – Caroche 6/7, 2012 at 12:13

B

1

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

Benedictus answered 17/7, 2011 at 3:37 Comment(3)

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. – Caroche 18/7, 2011 at 14:0

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 to your site, and you're good to go – Benedictus 20/7, 2011 at 0:32

No, I want(ed) web search - nothing like inurl:example.org. – Caroche 20/7, 2011 at 14:53

S

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.

Sokoto answered 24/1, 2013 at 16:52 Comment(2)

Add a link to that search API and some info to make your answer worthwhile. :) – Caroche 28/1, 2013 at 18:40

With Faroo, your API key is restricted to the IP address you specify during registration. – Sidneysidoma 3/11, 2015 at 4:40

O

0

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

Onto answered 7/6, 2013 at 3:2 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags