Google Hacks, 2nd Edition

SafeSearch Certify URLs

Feed URLs into Google’s SafeSearch to determine whether they point at questionable content.

Only three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and accidentally visiting a once family-safe web site that now contains text and images that would make a horse blush.

As you probably know if you’ve ever put up a web site, domain names are registered for finite lengths of time. Sometimes registrations accidentally expire; sometimes businesses fold and allow the registrations to expire; sometimes other companies take them over.

Other companies might just want the domain name, some companies want the traffic that the defunct site generated, and in a few cases, the new owners of the domain name try to hold it hostage, offering to sell it back to the original owners for a great deal of money. (This doesn’t work as well as it used to because of the dearth of Internet companies that actually have a great deal of money.)

When a site isn’t what it once was, that’s no big deal. When it’s not what it once was and is now X-rated, that’s a bigger deal. When it’s not what it once was, is now X-rated, and is on the link list of a site you run, that’s a really big deal.

But how to keep up with all the links? You can visit each link periodically to determine if it’s still okay, you can wait for hysterical emails from site visitors, or you can just not worry about it. Or you can put the Google API to work.

This program lets you check a list of URLs in Google’s SafeSearch mode. If ...