To run shortest_search.py you need an API key for Google’s Custom Search JSON/Atom API which you can get here. If you don’t want to do that you can just play around in the sandbox version. It doesn’t search, but does generate search suggestions.

ShortestSearch

Program to find the shortest phrase to Google to ensure a given URL is the first result*

Motivation

Standard URLs are hard to remember and take too long to type; URL-shorteners give links that are quicker to type but even harder to remember; and when instructing someone to Google something we often give them too much information.

This aims to perfect the art of “It should be the first result if you Google ‘x y z’ “.

Examples

Input: “https://www.ted.com/talks/david_eagleman_can_we_create_new_senses_for_humans”

Output: “TED VEST”

Input: “http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html”

Output: “WRITING BRIEFLY”

Note: Google’s search results are location and user dependent, therefore:

• For a given URL, the shortest phrase will not necessarily be the same for everyone.
• A given phrase may not return the intended URL as the first search result for everyone.

*Some URLs may have no such phrase