Get google search results in java without being flagged

Question

I have a one time task where I need to query google programmatically. However I don't want to trouble google and get my code flagged as a bot. Does anyone know the criteria that google uses to detect bots? Is it possible to issue queries at intervals or in smaller batches and work around the problem? I only need about 3000 queries to get my work done.

Answer 1

Well, most software catch bots by using

• time scale (you can't search different things with frequency 5 ms for example)
• your network gateway (aka IP).

For example google maps, foursquare, yahoo .... have access 1k-10k per day from the same external IP.