Lynx seems to have some interesting problems with this. This worked for me:

exec "xterm -e lynx $search";
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as did this:

use strict;
my $search="http://www.google.com/search?q=";
foreach my $arg (@ARGV) {
    $search .= $arg . " ";
}
$search =~ s/\s/+/g;
$search =~ s/\"/%22/g;
$search =~ s/\'/%27/g;
$search =~ s/\+$//;
# $search .= "&btnG=Google+Search";
# $search = "--cookies $search";

exec "w3m $search"
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I've found w3m to be better than lynx, anyway (table support, among other things).