Using Google Search API With Python

Businesses all over the world fall head over heels to ensure that their website ranks highly on Google. That is because people use it the most as their most preferred search engine in the world. Due to this, there are truckloads of data that can be scraped and used for better insights about the user and utilize it to market their products better. But scraping of data using third-party tools is difficult to accomplish but Google provides a custom search API to use the immense information available.

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What Is An API?

API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of procedures and functions that are bundled together to help create applications or services. The API shields the developers from the nitty-gritty of the processes involved inside the API. It exposes only the processes that are available, the input and the output parameters that should be used to get the output.

A simple example is a weather service app where all you have to do is to set the location. Using that as the input the app will provide the weather details of that location which includes temperature, humidity, precipitation, and more. Similarly, Google search API can be used to scrape information without having to know how it is derived. The API is used to access the end result and results are displayed. There are many APIs for different purposes, one such is the Google search console with Python.

Prerequisites For Using The Google Search API With Python

• The foremost thing needed to use the API is to have a google account. That will help to create a project in the Google API console.
• Once you have set up your Google account next is to check out the search console. Being familiar with the user interface helps in creating the project quickly.
• Activate access to the API, create credentials, and enable it by using the API console and register your application. Create an API key by clicking on create credentials – API key. From the same Credentials page create your Client ID and make a note of it as that will be used later.

Install The Python Client

Now Google API will need a client to be installed on the system, in this case, it is a Python client. Use the pip command or the install command to install the client library.

Test A Sample Code

Copy the source code to a .py file so that you can replace the Client ID and the Client Secret that was generated earlier in the Google Search Console API. Now that you have set up the code, the sample is ready to run. It can be run using the command line or using the google console to test it.

Run The Sample Code

There are many samples that can be run to test for analytics. Run the search_analytics_api_sample.py specifying the URI of the Search Console, Start, and End date. OAuth access is needed to run the sample, it can also be modified to add filters, change grouping, etc.

Once the sample code is tested you can add modified scripts to get the desired output. It is best to use the free-form edit mode to test queries quickly. The search results can be improved to display traffic changes, learn what queries are made, and more using the search API. So if you are wondering if you want to use google search engine on my website, you should as it can also be used to scrape data.

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