How to use Googles "link:" and other API's

Hi there!
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask questions about Google's API and how to combine it with PHP, but I'll see what happens! :-)
Here's the question:
How do use Google's "link" command in my programming? For example: entering "link:webhostingtalk.com" will give me following: "Results 1 - 10 of about 1,470 linking to webhostingtalk.com" .
Now, is there any way I can retrieve that number "1,470" using, for example, PHP or similar?
It might sound a bit confusing, but I'm sure the answer isn't too extensive.
Thank you so much for your time!





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- Julian JorgensenWeb Hosting CanadaNon profit hosting

I don't know how to do this with any APIs, but it would be very simple to do with a bit of screen scraping...





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Kevin CacklerThat Script Guy, LLC
(501) 358-4064

hi kevin, thanks for the quick response!... I don't have any experience with this, is it possible to give me a bit more info about screen scraping? whats the best way to do this in php?





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- Julian JorgensenWeb Hosting CanadaNon profit hosting

They may have an API out there to get the data easily, but here's a brute force method:
PHP Code:



<?php
function google_links($site_url = 'example.com')
{
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*if ($stream = fopen('http://www.google.com/search?hl=en
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*else
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*return false;
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*fclose($stream);
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*$contents = explode('Results <b>1</b> - <b>', $contents);
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*$contents = explode('<b>', $contents[1]);
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*$contents = explode('</b>', $contents[1]);
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*
ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*ÂÂ*return $contents[0];
}
echo google_links('webhostingtalk.com'); // 1,470
echo google_links('google.com'); // 626,000
?>




Works fine now but if they change anything, we're outta luck =P

hehe thank you so much! appreciate it!





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- Julian JorgensenWeb Hosting CanadaNon profit hosting