Python decoding Unicode is not supported

I am having a problem with my encoding in Python. I have tried different methods but I can't seem to find the best way to encode my output to UTF-8.

This is what I am trying to do:

result = unicode(google.searchGoogle(param), "utf-8").encode("utf-8")

searchGoogle returns the first Google result for param.

This is the error I get:

exceptions.TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported

Does anyone know how I can make Python encode my output in UTF-8 to avoid this error?

Looks like google.searchGoogle(param) already returns unicode:

>>> unicode(u'foo', 'utf-8')

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
    unicode(u'foo', 'utf-8')
TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported

So what you want is:

result = google.searchGoogle(param).encode("utf-8")

As a side note, your code expects it to return a utf-8 encoded string so what was the point in decoding it (using unicode()) and encoding back (using .encode()) using the same encoding?