I second CountZero's recommendation. If you are stumped by the Google API, the Oreilly Google Hacks title can ease you into using it as well as web services. In addition, Google's AUP is pretty clear that they prohibit automated scanning and scraping of their results unless you use the Google API to do it. I understand their reasoning and think it is a fair policy. Please sign up for a Google Developer account and use their API.

Word of warning, I believe Google blocks by IP if they catch you doing automated scans(w/o using Google API). I don't know how long the block lasts, but if you share your internet connection via NAT, there's a chance you'll punish everyone in the office with no access to Google for a while. I know I'd be one to show up with pitchforks and torches at at your cube if that happened.

Later

use strict;
use IO::Socket::INET;

my $limit = 5;  #max number of output

&google_search(@ARGV);

sub google_search {
  my $keyword = shift;

  if (!$keyword) { die("no keywords\n"); }

  my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new(
    Proto => "tcp",
    PeerAddr => "www.google.com",
    PeerPort => 80,
    Timeout => 3
  );

  if (!$socket) { die("error connecting to the server\n"); }

  $socket->autoflush(1);

  my $query = $keyword; $query =~ tr/ /+/;
  my $desc = "";
  my $link = "";
  my $junk = "";
  my $idx = 0;
  my $nodoc = 0;

  print $socket "GET /search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=$query HTTP/1.1\r\n
+";
  print $socket "Host: www.google.com\r\n";
  print $socket "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0\r\n";
  print $socket "Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image
+/pjpeg, */*\r\n";
  print $socket "Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n";
  print $socket "Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n";
  print $socket "\r\n";

  while (my $buffer = <$socket>) {
    $buffer =~ s/\s+$//; $buffer =~ s/^\s+//; $buffer =~ tr/ //s;
    $buffer =~ s/<b>//g; $buffer =~ s/<\/b>//g;

    if (!$idx && ($buffer =~ /^<br><br>Your search - $keyword - did no
+t match any documents./)) {
      print STDOUT "no doc found, sorry\n";
      $nodoc = 1;
      last;
    } else {
      if (!$desc) { ($junk, $desc) = $buffer =~ /(<\/blockquote>|<div>
+|<\/a><\/font> )<p class=g><a href=\S+>(.*?)<\/a>(<br>)?<font size=-1
+>([^<]| \- \[ | \.\.\.|<i>|<span class=f>)/; $desc =~ s/&amp;/&/g; $d
+esc =~ s/&quot;/"/g; }
      if (!$link) { ($junk, $link) = $buffer =~ /(<\/blockquote>|<div>
+|<\/a><\/font> )<p class=g><a href=(\S+)>(.*?)<\/a>(<br>)?<font size=
+-1>([^<]| \- \[ | \.\.\.|<i>|<span class=f>)/; }
      if ($desc && $link) {
        if (++$idx > $limit) { last; }
        print STDOUT "$idx) $desc\n";
        print STDOUT "      $link\n";
        $desc = "";
        $link = "";

      }
    }
  }

  close($socket);

  if (!$idx && !$nodoc) { print STDOUT "no doc found, sorry\n"; }
}

1;
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