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The Google search ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live search results, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Google search results through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Analyze Google Search Results in R


Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Google Search results in Microsoft R Open.

Access Google Search results with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Google Search and the RODBC package to work with remote Google Search results in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Google Search results and visualize Google Search results in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Google Search as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Google Search follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

To search with a Google custom search engine, you need to set the CustomSearchId and ApiKey connection properties.

To obtain the CustomSearchId property, sign into Google Custom Search Engine and create a new search engine.

To obtain the ApiKey property, you must enable the Custom Search API in the Google API Console.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Google Search in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData GoogleSearch Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Google Search Description = My Description CustomSearchId = def456 ApiKey = abc123

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint) checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Google Search Results as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData GoogleSearch Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Google Search APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Google Search API.

videosearch <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Title, ViewCount FROM VideoSearch WHERE SearchTerms = 'WayneTech'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(videosearch)

Plot Google Search Results

You can now analyze Google Search results with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2)) barplot(videosearch$ViewCount, main="Google Search VideoSearch", names.arg = videosearch$Title, horiz=TRUE)