Csdrhrt

I'm making a little script with Autohotkey to quickly go to the first Google result of a search term.
My problem is, the only method I've found for doing this though the URL is acting a little inconsistent.

http://www.google.com/search?q=searchterm&btnI=745

This only works when the first hit is deemed to be a very good match. Otherwise Google shows the normal 10 results.
However, the actual "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on their front pages always takes you to the first result.

Try these links:

http://www.google.com/search?q=new%20york&btnI=745          <- works

http://www.google.com/search?q=new%20york%20dijon&btnI=745  <- doesn't work

"new york dijon" on the front-page and then hitting "I'm Feeling Lucky" does work though.

Any idea how I can get it to consistently work in URL form?

Edit: Okay, seems this might not be doable in a single URL. I'll mark a greasemonkey-script workaround as correct if posted.

Made a workaround Greasemonkey script:

// ==UserScript==

// @name         Google IFL

// @match        https://*.google.com/*?lucky=*

// @match        http://*.google.com/*?lucky=*

// ==/UserScript==



document.getElementById("gsr").style.display = 'none'; // optional. shows blank screen before forwarding. just looks better imo.

document.getElementById("gbqfq").focus();

var pathname = document.URL;

var start = pathname.indexOf("?lucky=");

var searchterm = pathname.substring(start+7);

document.getElementById("gbqfq").value = decodeURI(searchterm);

var btnLucky = document.getElementsByName('btnI')[0];

btnLucky.click();

This script will always forward you to Google's "I Feel Lucky" choice provided you navigate to www.google.com/?lucky=searchterm_goes_here.

I'm using it in FireFox by having a keyword to a bookmark going to www.google.com/?lucky=%s.

When you have Javascript disabled, it seems that Google uses both a cookie and the HTTP Referrer header being set to https://www.google.com to track if you actually came from the Google home page and clicked the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. I don't think you'll be able to convince Google to hand you the lucky result with just a URL.

The best solution I've come up with is: Chrome > Preferences > Manage Search Engines... add:

• 
  Search Engine: I'm Feeling Lucky


• 
  Keyword: (replace with your preferred shortcut)
  


• 
  URL: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&btnI

Then as per this thread, add the following Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey script to reload the page with Google as the referrer.

// ==UserScript==

// @name         I'm feeling lucky fix

// @version      0.0

// @description  Makes Google I'm feeling lucky work reliably from the address bar

// @author       Will Rice

// @match        http://*.google.co.uk/search?q=*&btnI

// @match        https://*.google.co.uk/search?q=*&btnI

// @match        http://*.google.com/search?q=*&btnI

// @match        https://*.google.com/search?q=*&btnI

// ==/UserScript==



document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].style.display = "none";

window.location.href = location;

Setting the script to "run at body" and adding any additional Google TLDs as you see fit (I couldn't get regex working in Tampermonkey).

Some of the otherwise-elegant solutions on this page no longer work, so I'm adding my solution here, which is working for me on tampermonkey chrome in Dec of 2018.

@match vs. @include has changed for tampermonkey (@match can't include query terms) which caused quite a bit of debugging frustration with this in case google changes their URLs.

// ==UserScript==

// @name         I'm feeling lucky fix

// @version      0.1

// @description  Makes Google I'm feeling lucky work reliably from the address bar

// @author       Kevin Watt

// @include      https://www.google.*/*btnI*

// ==/UserScript==

// // @match      https://*/*

if (location.href.indexOf('btnI')) document.querySelector('#search a').click()