I cannot figure out how to to automate launching the user's default browser and doing the equivalent of placing a string into the address bar and doing a search. I do not need to capture the results as the user will just scan the returns manually. A webbrowser control is not a solution as this action has to be separate from the application UI.

There is nothing I can see in ShellExecute or Wscript.shell parameters that would do this.

Considering the many default search engines choices available for users to have configured the default browser to use, I cannot reliably build a URL as a ShellExecute parameter.

For those that are curious about what I'm doing, I'm passing a Tel number to a search engine because reverse number lookup sites are just garbage nowadays.