Checks a list of names to determine whether they are in the top four Google search results.

get_google_rank_for_candidates.py

import json
import urllib
import urllib2

candidates = ['David Sweet', 'James W. Byron', 'Brad Clark', 'Terry Anderson', 'Stephen E. Brotherston', 'Dave Braden', 'Annie Tennier', 'Michelle Stockwell', 'Marie Bountrogianni', 'Nancy MacBain', 'David Christopherson', 'Wayne Marston', 'Chris Charlton', 'Peter Ormond', 'Karen Burson', 'David Hart Dyke', 'Dean Allison', 'Stephen Henry Bieda', 'David Heatley', 'Bryan Jongbloed', 'Jim Enos', 'Michael James Baldasaro', 'Jamile Ghaddar', 'Anthony Giles', 'Lisa Nussey', 'Wendell Fields', 'Bob Green Innes', 'Bob Mann', 'Greg Pattinson', 'Henryk Adamiec', 'Sid Frere', 'Gord Hill']

url_template = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q={{q}}&key={{key}}&userip={{userip}}'
key = 'YOUR-GOOGLE-API-KEY'
referer = 'http://your.domain.com'
userip = '127.0.0.1'

# uncomment if working from behind a proxy server
# proxy_handler = urllib2.ProxyHandler({'http': 'http://proxy.server.ca'})
# opener = urllib2.build_opener(proxy_handler)
# urllib2.install_opener(opener)

def get_results(addon='candidate', display_all=False):
    """Gets the results of the Google queries"""
    total = 0
    total_in_results = 0
    for candidate in candidates:
        total += 1
        q = '%s %s' % (get_straight_name(candidate), addon)
        url = make_url(q)
        request = urllib2.Request(url, None, {'Referer': referer})
        response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
        content = json.loads(response.read())
        results = content['responseData']['results']
        print '%s - ' % (q),
        in_top_four = False
        if display_all == True: print
        for result in results:
            if display_all==True:
                print result['titleNoFormatting'], result['url']
            if 'elections.raisethehammer.org' in result['url']:
                in_top_four = True
        if in_top_four == True:
            print 'Yes'
            total_in_results += 1
        else:
            print 'No'
    print
    print 'Summary: RTH Elections is in the top four results for %s out of %s candidates.' % (total_in_results, total)

def make_url(q, url_template=url_template, key=key, userip=userip):
    """Makes an URL"""
    return url_template.replace('{{q}}', urllib.quote_plus(q)).replace('{{key}}', key).replace('{{userip}}', userip)

def get_straight_name(name):
    """Takes a `Lastname, Firstname` string and returns a `Firstname Lastname` string"""
    namelist = name.split(',')
    namelen = len(namelist)
    outname = []
    for i in range(namelen): outname.append(namelist[namelen-i-1].strip())
    return ' '.join(outname)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    get_results()