and then I find a solution by:
ie.div(:id, “searchList”).links

and then by googles, I find a better solution:
links_searchlist = ie101.links.find_all { |link| link.class_name == ‘permalink’ }
puts “the links in the searchlist:”
puts links_searchlist.length

and in another case, following code also works:
searchlistlinks = ie102.links.find_all { |link| link.id =~ /hitURL/ }
links_searchlist = searchlistlinks.length
puts links_searchlist

following can also work:
searchlistlinks = ie33.links.find_all { |link| link.href =~ /something/ }
but be careful that the following (url) will not work:
searchlistlinks = ie33.links.find_all { |link| link.url =~ /something/ }

Recently I found the best solution by google:
links = ie51.div(:id, ‘threadlist’).html.scan(/something/).count
puts links