Google image search says api no longer available

The answer I found was using Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE) API. Note that this is limited to 100 free requests per day.

Creating cx and modifying it to search for images

1. Create custom search engine at https://cse.google.com/cse/create/new based on your search criteria.
2. Choose sites to search (leave this blank if you want to search the entire web, otherwise you can enter a site to search in one particular site)
3. Enter a name and a language for your search engine.
4. Click "create." You can now find cx in your browser URL.
5. Under "Modify your search engine," click the "Control Panel" button. In the "edit" section you will find an "Image Search" label with an ON/OFF button, change it to ON. Click "update" to save your changes.

Conducting a search with the API

The API endpoint url is https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1

The following JSON parameters are used for this API:

• q: specifies search text
• num: specifies number of results. Requires an integer value between 1 and 10 (inclusive)
• start: the "offset" for the results, which result the search should start at. Requires an integer value between 1 and 101.
• imgSize: the size of the image. I used "medium"
• searchType: must be set to "image"
• filetype: specifies the file type for the image. I used `"jpg", but you can leave this out if file extension doesn't matter to you.
• key: an API key, obtained from https://console.developers.google.com/
• cx: the custom search engine ID from the previous section

Simply make a GET request by passing above parameters as JSON to the API endpoint (also listed above).

Note: If you set a list of referrers in the search engine settings, visiting the URL via your browser will likely not work. You will need to make an AJAX call (or the equivalent from another language) from a server specified in this list. It will work for only the referrers which were specified in the configuration settings.

Reference: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json-api/v1/reference/cse/list

Now You can search images with Custom image search API.

You can do this with two steps:

1. Get CUSTOM_SEARCH_ID

Go to - https://cse.google.ru/cse/all

Here you must create new Search Engine. Do this and enable Image Search at there.

Screen(i am Russian... sorry)

then get this search engine ID. To do this press at Get Code button:

And there find line with cx = "here will be your CUSTOM_SEARCH_ID":

Ok. It's done, now second step:

2. Get SERVER_KEY

Go to google Console - https://console.developers.google.com/project

Press to Create project button, enter the name and other required information. Pick this project and go to Enable Apis Now find Custom Search Engine.

And Enable it.

Now we must go to Credentials and create new Server Key:

Ok. Now we can use Image Search.

Query:

https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key=SERVER_KEY&cx=CUSTOM_SEARCH_ID&q=flower&searchType=image&fileType=jpg&imgSize=xlarge&alt=json

Replace the SERVER_KEY and CUSTOM_SEARCH_ID and call this request.

Limit: for free you can search only 100 images per day.