srom is a command line tool, and accompanying library, that programmatically queries search engines to determine wether the internet thinks a given term sucks or rules.

srom requires a working Go installation.

$ go install github.com/jmcvetta/srom

The first time you run srom it will create a configuration file and prompt you to populate it with Google and Azure API credentials. You must provide credentials for at least one search engine. If you only want to use one engine, remove the other engine's section from the config file.

$ srom 'johnny cash'
16:31:41 srom.go:92:              Azure Data Market        435  3030   0.143564
16:31:41 srom.go:92:           Google Custom Search         92  5540   0.016606

The term 'johnny cash' has a sucks/rules ratio of 0.0800854273152947
The internet thinks 'johnny cash' ROCKS HARD.

See GoDoc for automatic documentation.

Currently srom supports Google's crappy "Custom Search" API and Microsoft's likewise crappy Bing API. Alas, both of these APIs returns hit counts orders of magnitude fewer than searches on their respective websites.

I would be happy to add support for other - perhaps less craptastic - search APIs. Please alert me if you know of one. Alas, Duck-Duck-Go's API is even more crippled, as it does not return hit count for a query.

Don Marti first introduced me to - and perhaps invented? - the concept of a Sucks-Rules-O-Meter. For the historically curious, his site hosts a defunct Operating System SROM.