I want to tweet my google searches

October 16, 2016 3:08 PM

Is it possible to make a twitter bot that tweets out my google searches verbatim? How would I do that?

I tried to do some googling about this (haha) but all I could find is stuff about how to get your google search history deleted, hidden, etc.

Basically what I'm curious about is if there's a way that, whenever I search for something on google (while I'm logged into my account) a twitter bot tweets out my search verbatim.

Is something like this even possible? I'm willing to do a bunch of research but I'm not sure where to start.

Thanks!

posted by hapticactionnetwork to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: If I were looking into this, I'd consider five approaches.

I'd look at IFTTT to see if there's some way to trigger a task with a google search (I think not, but it's worth checking because that would be easiest.)

Next, I'd try figuring out if Google Now can help you out. On a phone if you search via Google Now instead of via the normal search bar, you can redirect that search via Tasker to things like Autowear or Autovoice, which makes me think you could also figure out how to capture the text and send it to Twitter. But I don't know if Google Now for a desktop computer exists.

I'd also be checking whether Google search has an API and if so, what it lets you do.

Another approach would be to find out if it's even possible to download your Google search history in some structured format, e.g. excel, csv, etc. If so, you could periodically run a script or something to do so, and then another script to tweet out the contents of that spreadsheet. I know how to do the latter, so if you need to do that, memail me. You may not even need to download it if you can save the contents of your search history to a Google Spreadsheet online.

Finally, if all else fails, you might be able to write a keylogger script that triggers only when you are on the Google search page.
posted by lollusc at 3:26 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Off the top of my head, you could rig up a simple website that acts as a pass-through to both Google and Twitter.

That is, you make your own webpage with a search box. You code it such that when you enter a search in the box and hit enter, the webpage does 2 things:

(1) redirects you to the Google results page for that search, and
(2) tweets that search under your Twitter account using the Twitter API.

If you only wanted to use it from your laptop, it wouldn't even have to be hosted anywhere -- it could just be a local website. Of course, if you want to use it from your phone or other devices then you'd have to get web hosting.
posted by mekily at 6:01 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I bet one could create a Chrome extension to do this.
posted by actionstations at 11:49 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks everybody, this is all really helpful!
posted by hapticactionnetwork at 8:51 AM on October 17, 2016

Ask Commander Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation how he set it up!
posted by boghead at 9:15 AM on October 17, 2016 [1 favorite]