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
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools ScrollSpy

    I've been excited to release this plugin for a long time. MooTools ScrollSpy is a unique but simple MooTools plugin that listens to page scrolling and fires events based on where the user has scrolled to in the page. Now you can fire specific...

  • By
    Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Using MooTools 1.2

    As you can probably tell, I try to mix some fun in with my MooTools madness but I also try to make my examples as practical as possible. Well...this may not be one of those times. I love movies and useless movie trivia so naturally I'm...

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!