New Google AJAX Search API
Google have released a new experimental Google AJAX Search API that lets you integrate a dynamic Google search module into your web pages so your users can mash up Google search results with other content on your site or add search results clippings to their own content. The API allow you to choose between web, video, blog, local or all of them, in addition to a "Copy" option which allow you to copy results for further use on your site.
The AJAX Search API is currently in Version 0.1. It's an experiment designed to get developer feedback and may change dramatically over the next several months, so you shouldn't deploy this on your mission-critical web site just yet. When we formally launch Version 1.0, it will likely require code changes to your site. Version 1.0 will also likely contain advertising.
To get started Sign up for a Google AJAX Search API key, you'll have to enter url of your website and you receive the key and an example web page to get you started. Documentation available for more details about using the new New Google AJAX Search API. Below is the default code generated for use on AJAX Magazine url :
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>My Google AJAX Search API Application</title>
<link href="http://www.google.com/uds/css/gsearch.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<script src="http://www.google.com/uds/api?file=uds.js&v=0.1&key=ABQIAAAAQCM7u1sryY9GgMkD_0OrwRT-ZuxQkxCIbD6ZrN_MQiXUZwur5hQbTxIUpefYlS5z3mLitdhzH3j4TA" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script language="Javascript" type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
function OnLoad() {
// Create a search control
var searchControl = new GSearchControl();
// Add in a full set of searchers
var localSearch = new GlocalSearch();
searchControl.addSearcher(localSearch);
searchControl.addSearcher(new GwebSearch());
searchControl.addSearcher(new GvideoSearch());
searchControl.addSearcher(new GblogSearch());
// Set the Local Search center point
localSearch.setCenterPoint("New York, NY");
// Tell the searcher to draw itself and tell it where to attach
searchControl.draw(document.getElementById("searchcontrol"));
// Execute an inital search
searchControl.execute("Google");
}
//]]>
</script>
</head>
<body onload="OnLoad()">
<div id="searchcontrol"/>
</body>
</html>
There is two display mode available Linear and Tabbed Display Mode, in addition to some options to control the search results for example to Expand on Search or Partial expand on Search, or Remain Closed on Search. This will be useful to personalize the display depending on the fonctionnality you would like to implement. You can see the different features working on the API options demo
About using this new API, there will be certainly many applications which could link google results to other applications such bookmarks, collecting information for journalist (if they have added google news too), ... in the Usage Samples there is many interesting demos such Blog Comment Form, My Favorite Places, Searchers and Options, Locale Selection, ... How do you think you can use the new Google AJAX Search API ?
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