This is not a python problem. That is the text of the site when you go to it. The site uses cookies to store a session of your visit. Using python bypasses that cookie and throws an error. You will be better served using teh mechanize library.
http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ Even though you may not get far, since the site you are attempting to search prevents robots from scouring their site. >>> import mechanize >>> from mechanize import Browser >>> br= Browser() >>> br.open("http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/";) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mechanize-0.1.4b-py2.4.egg/mechanize/_mechanize.py", line 156, in open File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/mechanize-0.1.4b-py2.4.egg/mechanize/_mechanize.py", line 214, in _mech_open mechanize._response.httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 403: request disallowed by robots.txt -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
