a web search api

Hi,
   I am in need of a web search api that can get me number of hits. I want
this to evaluate a research prototype published sometime ago. The system is
not developed by me and at that time Google had a free web search api. I
cannot find a free web search api to get this thing done as Google, Bing,
and Yahoo are charging for web search apis now. The system needs to query
around 50k - 100k queries. Please let me know if you are aware of something
useful here. Thank you.

-- 
Regards
Kalpa Gunaratna
*Home Page* <http://knoesis.wright.edu/researchers/kalpa/>* LinkedIn
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/kalpagunaratna>* *Blog
<http://kalpagunaratna.wordpress.com/>*
@Kno.e.sis <http://knoesis.org/> - Ohio Center of Excellence in
Knowledge-enabled Computing