Dig deeper into the hierarchies of web sites matching your search criteria.
One of Google’s big strengths is that it can find your search term instantly and with great precision. But sometimes you’re not interested so much in one definitive result as in lots of diverse results; maybe you even want some that are a bit more on the obscure side.
One method I’ve found rather useful is to ignore all results shallower than a particular level in a site’s directory hierarchy. You avoid all the clutter of finds on home pages and go for subject matter otherwise often hidden away in the depths of a site’s structure. While content comes and goes, ebbs and flows from a site’s main focus, it tends to gather in more permanent locales, categorized and archived, like with like.
This script asks for a query along with a preferred depth, above
which results are thrown out. Specify a depth of four and your
results will come only from http://example.com/a/b/c/d, not
/a, /a/b/, or
/a/b/c.
Because you’re already limiting the kinds of results you see, it’s best to use more common words for what you’re looking for. Obscure query terms can often cause absolutely no results to turn up.
Tip
The default number of loops, retrieving 10 items apiece, is set to 50. This is to assure you glean some decent number of results, because many will be tossed. You can, of course, alter this number but bear in mind that you’re using that number of your daily quota of 1,000 Google API queries per developer’s key.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# deep_blue_g.cgi
# Limiting search results to a particular depth in a web
# site's hierarchy.
# deep_blue_g.cgi is called as a CGI with form input
# Your Google API developer's key
my $google_key='insert key here';
# Location of the GoogleSearch WSDL file
my $google_wdsl = "./GoogleSearch.wsdl";
# Number of times to loop, retrieving 10 results at a time
my $loops = 10;
use SOAP::Lite;
use CGI qw/:standard *table/;
print
header( ),
start_html("Fishing in the Deep Blue G"),
h1("Fishing in the Deep Blue G"),
start_form(-method=>'GET'),
'Query: ', textfield(-name=>'query'),
br( ),
'Depth: ', textfield(-name=>'depth', -default=>4),
br( ),
submit(-name=>'submit', -value=>'Search'),
end_form( ), p( );
# Make sure a query and numeric depth are provided
if (param('query') and param('depth') =~ /d+/) {
# Create a new SOAP object
my $google_search = SOAP::Lite->service("file:$google_wdsl");
for (my $offset = 0; $offset <= $loops*10; $offset += 10) {
my $results = $google_search ->
doGoogleSearch(
$google_key, param('query'), $offset, 10, "false", "", "false",
"", "latin1", "latin1"
);
last unless @{$results->{resultElements}};
foreach my $result (@{$results->{'resultElements'}}) {
# Determine depth
my $url = $result->{URL};
$url =~ s!^w+://|/$!!g;
# Output only those deep enough
( split(///, $url) - 1) >= param('depth') and
print
p(
b(a({href=>$result->{URL}},$result->{title}||'no title')), br( ),
$result->{URL}, br( ),
i($result->{snippet}||'no snippet')
);
}
}
print end_html;
}This hack runs as a CGI script. Point your browser at it, fill out query and depth fields, and click the “Submit” button.
Figure 6-18 shows a query for "Jacques Cousteau", restricting results to a depth of
6—that’s six levels down from the
site’s home page. You’ll notice
some pretty long URLs in there.
Perhaps you’re interested in just the opposite of
what this hack provides: you want only results from higher up in a
site’s hierarchy. Hacking this hack is simple
enough: swap in a < (less than) symbol instead
of the > (great than) in the following line:
( split(///, $url) - 1) <= param('depth') and