Google Grabber — Using PHP to Find Out How Many Pages Your Domain Has Listed in Google

By  on  

Most bloggers make an effort to get as many pages listed on Google as possible. Benefits of being listed in Google may include:

  • Increased blog visits
  • Increased ad clicks
  • Broadened visitors / audience
  • Increased article comments
  • Increased referral revenues

Using a short amount of PHP code, you can query Google to retrieve the number of pages your domain has listed in Google.

The Code

/* return result number */
function get_google_results($domain = 'davidwalsh.name')
{
	// get the result content
	$content = file_get_contents('http://www.google.com/search?q=site:'.$domain);

	// parse to get results
	$result = get_match('/Results <b>(.*)from/isU',$content);

	// split the results
	$split1 = explode('of about',$result);

	// return result
	return $split1[1] ? strip_tags($split1[1]) : 0;
}

/* helper: does the regex */
function get_match($regex,$content)
{
	preg_match($regex,$content,$matches);
	return $matches[1];
}

The Usage

/* do it! */
echo 'davidwalsh.name: '.get_google_results('davidwalsh.name'); // 164
echo 'digg.com: '.get_google_results('digg.com'); // 3,790,000
echo 'google.com: '.get_google_results('google.com'); // 19,300,000
echo 'cnn.com: '.get_google_results('cnn.com'); // 2,180,000
echo 'imdb.com: '.get_google_results('imdb.com'); // 19,000,000
echo 'dzone.com: '.get_google_results('dzone.com'); // 484,000
echo 'fark.com: '.get_google_results('fark.com'); // 7,390
echo 'some-domain-that-doesnt-exist.com: '.get_google_results('some-domain-that-doesnt-exist'); // 0

Recent Features

  • By
    6 Things You Didn&#8217;t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

  • By
    I&#8217;m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Vertical Centering

    Front-end developing is beautiful, and it's getting prettier by the day. Nowadays we got so many concepts, methodologies, good practices and whatnot to make our work stand out from the rest. Javascript (along with its countless third party libraries) and CSS have grown so big, helping...

  • By
    Chris Coyier&#8217;s Favorite CodePen Demos II

    Hey everyone! Before we get started, I just want to say it's damn hard to pick this few favorites on CodePen. Not because, as a co-founder of CodePen, I feel like a dad picking which kid he likes best (RUDE). But because there is just so...

Discussion

  1. Or, you could just register your site with Google Webmaster tools at: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools.

  2. True. I’m not a big fan of Google’s Webmaster Tools. Plus, with my grabber, I can loop through all 100+ customer domains and get the information quicker than navigating through GWT.

  3. Kenny

    Hi, David,

    I don’t know much about php, but your codes seems very usefull, can you tell me how do I put this in action?

    thanks.

  4. I definitely love you … ^^ … thats a quick way :-).

  5. kenny

    Hi, David,

    How do i put it in action please?

    thank you.

  6. Concerned...

    Just a quick one as I stumbled over this whilst looking around…

    You do realise that this may count as using the Google servers/services in an automated fashion – which would be against G’s Terms of Service?

  7. Tope

    This script does not work again. Google as change their result format. PLEASE, update.

  8. To get it WORKING again:

    change the last three lines with these:

    // parse to get results
    $result = get_match(‘/About (.*) results/i’,$content);

    // split the results
    $split1 = explode(‘ ‘,$result);

    // return result
    return $split1[0] ? strip_tags($split1[0]) : 0;

  9. cmcm63366

    Burberry outlet Bags there, very refreshing taste of summer to use the gray model. Simple and elegant style and practical package, can be described as beautiful share. If a top luxury brand in pursuit of a vanity, it is worth the vanity bags, it is perfect, profound, because the low-key, and can track the fraud out of kitsch; while participation and practice, can not withstand scrutiny , eternal. Check it out, definitely something you like.

  10. I can get result if i give any url.
    But i want to search links so i am passing link:digg.com.
    How to get that number ?

  11. View source code from opera miniserver:source

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!