The Custom Search JSON API lets you develop websites and applications to retrieve and display search results from Programmable Search Engine programmatically. With this API, you can use RESTful requests to get either web search or image search results in JSON format.
Data format
Custom Search JSON API can return results in JSON data format.
Related documents
The Custom Search JSON API uses the OpenSearch 1.1 Specification.
Prerequisites
Search engine ID
Before using the Custom Search JSON API you will first need to create and configure your Programmable Search Engine. If you have not already created a Programmable Search Engine, you can start by visiting the Programmable Search Engine control panel.
Follow the tutorial to learn more about different configuration options.
After you have created a Programmable Search Engine, visit the help center to learn how to locate your Search engine ID.
API key
Custom Search JSON API requires the use of an API key. Get a Key
Pricing
Custom Search JSON API provides 100 search queries per day for free. If you need more, you may sign up for billing in the API Console. Additional requests cost $5 per 1000 queries, up to 10k queries per day.
If you need more than 10k queries per day and your Programmable Search Engine searches 10 sites or fewer, you may be interested in the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API, which does not have a daily query limit.
Monitoring
Basic monitoring for the Custom Search JSON API is available through Cloud Platform Console's API Dashboard. For more advanced monitoring Google Cloud's Operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is available.
With Google Cloud Operations you can create custom dashboards, set up alerts, and access metrics data programmatically. To access Custom Search JSON API usage data in Google Cloud Operations, select "Resource type: Consumed API" and filter on "service = 'customsearch.googleapis.com'" in the Query Builder.
See Monitoring Your API Usage for a discussion of the different monitoring and alerting capabilities provided by the API Dashboard and the Google Cloud Operations suite.
Additional Query Quota
We have temporarily paused the ability to request additional query quota for the Custom Search JSON API. We will continue to provide updates as they become available.
Customers with pending query quota requests
All reviews for pending requests have been paused. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and we appreciate your patience.
What does this mean for my existing account?
Any previously approved quota increase requests will be honored. You will continue to be able to use these services as before, and you will continue to have access to all of the same features and capabilities.
Please note that the Programmable Search Element Paid API and the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API products do not have daily query limits.