The buzz about Web Services gets louder every day. Is it the promise of perfect interoperability, lower costs, and increased efficiency? In this article, an effort has taken to show you how to create your own “Google search engine” with Web Services provided by Google. First, you need to create a Google account here (all you need is an email address). In order to invoke the Web Services we also need the toolkit. In this article we will use PHP NuSoap classes; free download here.

I strongly recommend seeing the FAQ page to know all about Google’s cutting edge technology available to the public. If you are interested in the advanced theory of the search engine, see this publication from Stanford University

Google has made only three methods available in their Web API. You will see soon that it ’s just more than enough to build powerful applications.
Here is what they look like:
doGoogleSearch() – search for specified term in the Google database.
doGetCachedPage() – retrieve a page cache from the Google cache.
doSpellingSuggestion() – retrieve a spelling suggestion from Google.

The above methods exposed by the Google’s Web Services make it possible to use number of very cool features – Web search, cached document retrieval, phrase correction – in a simple but extensible manner, which opens up very interesting new possibilities for Web developers. Pic. 1 shows how a client program invokes a method from Google’s Web Services. Let’s rock and roll.

Download pdf Create Your Own Search Engine with PHP and Google Web Services