Google Hacks

Building a Google Box

Add a little box of Google results to any web page.

Most of the applications in this book stand by themselves or run via a web form. Google box is slightly different in that it creates a little output of URLs that you can take and integrate into a web page or other application.

What’s a Google Box?

A “Google box” is a small HTML snippet that shows Google search results for whatever query you’re searching for. You might wish to have on your web site a small box that shows pages similar to yours, or pages that link to yours, or just the results of a query.

Google Box

Google box can run from a server at a specified time, with results that you can then integrate into your web page. Or you might just want to keep an ongoing record of the top URLs that are generated for a query.

Google Boxes Everywhere

Google boxes as a concept—the idea of taking a shortened version of Google results an integrating them into a web page or some other place—are not new. In fact, they’re on their way to becoming ubiquitous when it comes to weblog and content management software. Radio Userland and Movable Type both offer easy integration of Google boxes. You should note that you’ll still need to get a developer’s key to use these modifications, though you might not have to download the API developer’s kit.

Radio Userland

Radio Userland makes “Google Glue” (http://radio.userland.com/googleApi) available for generating Google boxes quickly and easily. With Radio Userland and Manila, it’s as ...