How do you search the web programmatically these days?

For the first time in a long time, I need to query a search engine programmatically, and found that most of them block the use of curl, etc.

So, my question is simple: how do you solve the problem? I've tried searxng with mediocre success, but it seems a bit heavy to have to be running a complete separate service for this one thing that I only need every once in a while. I haven't tried using a service that requires an API key, simply because I'm not sure which direction to go or who to go with.

Just thought I would ask here first.