How does Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button work?I think that Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is great fun and want to have that feature on my site, but before I start digging into any sort of coding, can you tell me, how does it work? Before you tire out your brain too much, I should tell you that the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is ridiculously simple: it takes you to the #1 match for the given search term or keyword. That's all. No randomization, no selection of one of the first ten, just the #1 match. For example, let's say I searched on "diamond watch, mens" on Google (you can too: search). The results clearly show that the top match is the shopping comparison site Nextag:  Now, go to the Google home page and again type in "diamond watch, mens", but this time, instead of clicking on "Search", click on "I'm Feeling Lucky". Ahhhhh... now you know the secret! To add an "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature to your own site is straightforward, albeit a bit tricky since Google makes it hard to read their Web pages because there's so much going on behind the scenes. In a nutshell, though, here's their home page search box: <form action="http://www.google.com/search" name=f>
<input name=hl type=hidden value=en> <input maxlength=2048 name=q size=55 title="Google Search" value=""> <input name=btnG type=submit value="Google Search"> <input name=btnI type=submit value="I'm Feeling Lucky"> </form> We can simplify it a bit, but it turns out that if you just remove the "Google Search" button and only have "I'm Feeling Lucky", you get exactly the functionality you seek: <form action="http://www.google.com/search">
<input name=q size=30 value="" /> <input name=btnI type=submit value="I'm Feeling Lucky" /> </form> Here's how it looks in action: It's not too complicated, really. You can change the label on the button by changing what's specified in the value= field, as you desire, and if you'd like to have the result show up on a new page, rather than replacing the current page, add target="_blank to the form tag as an attribute.
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. Doesn't work if you enter a search term and press the Enter key, you get normal search results page instead. :o( Posted by: Sam at September 11, 2007 10:57 AMActually, Google's own example doesn't either... http://www.google.com/help/features.html#lucky 2 x :o( Posted by: Sam at September 11, 2007 11:00 AMThis isn't very helpful Dave. It only works on google pages. I have to say I have no idea what you're talking about, gang. I just typed in "banana" on the search box above, clicked on "I feel lucky" and was quickly taken to the #1 Google match -- Wikipedia. What do you see when you try this same search, and what browser are you using? Posted by: Dave Taylor at September 30, 2008 10:19 PMBanana does work Dave, takes you to banana in wikipedia. But ... here's one for you ... type: moviemeter birth What do you see when you perform the search from your site and what do you see when you perform the search from the google site?
I'm noting too that the "feeling lucky" code here only sometimes works, but the same search done directly on the Google page always works. Interestingly while "banana" will take you strait to the Wiki page, if you do a site search within Wikipedia "site:en.wikipedia.com banana" the lucky button fails. Posted by: Derek at October 13, 2008 11:19 PMWell I noted it works if it is a definate keyword... try it with more unlnown words and then with more known words... it is more likely to work with known words... I am goin to check if it is working with google coop I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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