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Ladies & Gentle Men Programmers!

If you add the following anonymous web proxy url prior to your chosen URL then you can view that URL anonymously via the http://anonymouse.org web proxy: Anonymouse.org[^]

For example, if you want to view ebay.com then you'd view it anonymously via this url:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/

So far so good. Type your URL here and see for yourself:

Anyways. Now, if you want to search for a keyword on google non-anonymously then you can do it by adding the following google url prior to your chosen KEYWORDS. http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#q=

For example, if your keywords are: php programming forum

then you'd keywords search on google via this url:
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#q=php%20programming%20forum

Again, so far so good.

But now look!
If you now want to search for a keyword on google ANONYMOUSLY then you should be able to do it by adding the following google url prior to your chosen KEYWORDS and the following anonymous web proxy url prior to that particular google url.
For example, if your keywords are again: php programming forum

then you'd keywords search on google via the anonymous web proxy with this url:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#q=php%20programming%20forum

But guess what ? For some reason google is not making the keywords search if you try searching google via a web proxy! Clicking the above mentioned link you will see it just shows Google homepage but no keywords search results or SERP! Why is that and how to code to solve this issue o that google does conduct searches if you're searching via a web proxy ?

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Dani AI

Generated

The immediate cause of the behavior in this thread is the use of a URL fragment (the "#q=..." form) instead of a server-side query. Fragments are handled in the browser and are not sent to the origin server, so a proxy given a fragment will request Google with no query and get the homepage. ’s observation that switching to a server-side search path (a real q= query parameter) fixes the query part is correct.

Even with a correct q= parameter, proxies commonly still show no results or only a broken CAPTCHA. Common reasons: the proxy doesn’t preserve cookies or headers, doesn’t proxy HTTPS correctly, strips or fails to rewrite absolute resource URLs, and blocks or can’t execute Google’s JavaScript; Google’s bot-detection then serves reCAPTCHA. The “submit button without the captcha image” described by is a classic sign that resource rewriting/HTTPS proxying is failing and the CAPTCHA image or its cookie isn’t being delivered through the proxy.

For a social network that cannot run a full proxy (and where the host forbids proxies), proxying live Google pages is both technically brittle and legally risky. Safer, more reliable approaches are to integrate an official search API and render results natively (examples: Google Programmable Search / Custom Search JSON API, Microsoft/Bing Web Search API, or privacy-focused provider APIs). Those return structured JSON, avoid the need to forward full pages, and reduce bot-detection problems — tradeoffs are cost, quotas and TOS compliance.

Checklist and minimal PHP sketch for an API-driven approach:

  • build queries with q= and URL-encode terms;
  • test server-side fetches to check for HTML vs CAPTCHA responses;
  • ensure any proxy rewrites absolute URLs, preserves cookies and supports HTTPS;
  • prefer official APIs where hosting/abuse risk is a concern.
$q = urlencode('php programming forum');
$api = 'https://api.example-search.com/v1/search?key=API_KEY&q=' . $q;
$response = file_get_contents($api);
$results = json_decode($response, true);

Running an open proxy invites abuse and hosting/legal exposure; review the host TOS and seek legal counsel if needed.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for Dani

This seems very complicated. Why not just use DuckDuckGo?

From what I understand, they function as a "proxy" in that they simply use Google's search API.

Member Avatar for Dani

It looks like anonymouse is using an older version of Google or something (If you compare the anonymouse'd version of the Google homepage to the current version, you'll see that it's an older snapshot).

Member Avatar for UI

Dani,

I am trying to build my own Social Network (SN) where you can view the web anonymously but I do not want to run my own web proxy as my host does not allow it plus it is risky running one as people would download illegal stuffs. If my SN users donload illegal stuffs (going against my TOS) then atleast my website isn't compromised.
My SN would have lots of features (which duck Duck Go etc. do not have) and one of them is anonymous browsing.

I just see the captcha submit button without the captcha img:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.google.com/search?q=php%20programming

I see no google search results atall!

Edited by UI
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