I realize I actually have a technical question about both this, and the "Mad Men" version that danso points[1] out...
How the heck do they do this when Google doesn't have an API, and will quickly rate-limit you for excessive volume of screen-scraping? How are they getting the google results to show in their own interfaces?
Ah, nice, and that URI (after first redirecting) suggests they are using the Web Search API that used to exist,and is still around but rate-limited:
> Note: The Google Web Search API has been officially deprecated as of November 1, 2010. It will continue to work as per our deprecation policy, but the number of requests you may make per day will be limited. Therefore, we encourage you to move to the new Custom Search API.
The Custom Search API is not free, and I think doesn't let you search all of Google either, but only 'custom search engines' set up with certain hosts.
All sorts of interesting things you could do with google if they gave you an api.
Both are actually using the old Google REST API that didn't have a such restricted free quota as the current custom search API. But the REST API has been marked as deprecated for three years now and might be subject to the next spring cleaning. (According to Google terms, it even might be shut down this month without further notice.)
How the heck do they do this when Google doesn't have an API, and will quickly rate-limit you for excessive volume of screen-scraping? How are they getting the google results to show in their own interfaces?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6729231