Can I "Feel Lucky" at a particular site?

May 5, 2008 11:20 AM

Does anyone know how to combine sitesearch and Feeling Lucky in google URLs?

I'm trying to create a search string that will search MSDN for a particular keyword and take me to the first match. The following URL does what I want (from this old ask.mefi), except it won't limit the search to a particular domain:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&btnI=Feeling+Lucky&q=strlen

If I add a site to the query string, though, it no longer behaves like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Instead, it shows a list of matches:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_sitesearch=msdn.microsoft.com&btnI=Feeling+Lucky&q=strlen

Is what I'm doing impossible?

posted by bonecrusher to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Weird. It only works for certain queries:

this search for strlen does redirect but this search for directx does redirect automatically.
posted by neustile at 11:46 AM on May 5, 2008

sorry, the first should say "this search for strlen does not redirect"
posted by neustile at 11:47 AM on May 5, 2008

Try this syntax: strLen

It works by passing 3 parameters:
&site:whatever.com
&q=YourQueryString
&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky
posted by Lanark at 1:17 PM on May 5, 2008

^ sorry that still ignores the site
posted by Lanark at 2:08 PM on May 5, 2008

OK I think that whats happening here is the page listed in the Google index is being redirected to another page, either because it's 404 or because the page has moved. Google must be detecting that and canceling the 'Lucky' feature.

e.g. Searching ibm.com for strlen the first result is this but the page then redirects to here

Searching cplusplus.com for strlen the first result is still a valid page so the feeling lucky option works as you'd expect.
posted by Lanark at 2:51 PM on May 5, 2008