At the moment our servers are very sensitive. The actual rate should be one query per 1.725s. This results in about 800 addresses less per day, or 1.6%. Pretty insignificant, yet detected by our software. My apologies for inconvenience at these early stages when we are gathering data and fine-tuning our geocoding API.
1. One query per 1.725 seconds = 50,086 per day, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say that this results in 800 fewer geocodes.
2. Do you mean that we should always wait 1.725 seconds between queries to your server or just that we should average that rate over the course of a day?
> 1. One query per 1.725 seconds = 50,086 per day, so I'm not sure what > you mean when you say that this results in 800 fewer geocodes.
If you were to send us an address every 1.7s, you would send 50823 rather than 50,086 queries per day. The difference is around 800 ... or more like 737
> 2. Do you mean that we should always wait 1.725 seconds between queries > to your server or just that we should average that rate over the course > of a day?
This is average rate. If you have a site that uses geocoder, it may happen that a number of visitors will generate a burst of traffic. We allow for that. However, as others noted, after a several hundred addresses, we start paying closer attention. This needs to be documented properly. My apologies for not making it clearer in the documentation or FAQ. We are working on it.
I believe that if you are doing batch geocoding, you should put a delay into your program of the 1.725 seconds or you will get the 403 Forbidden code after about 1000 or so hits, as Bo indicates.
As for use on a website, this limit would cause the geocoder to not be as useful using the API. On the other hand, Bo and friends want us (strongly) to cache our results, so perhaps it's best to redirect these geocode requests to a server based program that can put in the required wait or retrieve a previously coded result without hitting Google.
I had the same problem as John, and it happened to me even sooner (after only 5,000 queries) since I wasn't regulating the speed of my geocoder requests (I was sending about 5 requests a second).
I am still receiving the 403 forbidden responses hours later. Do you know how long it takes before that gets reset and I can try again? I'll slow down the requests this time, I promise!
I waited until I got an answer, which was the next day, so maybe you need 12 hours or more to clear the buffer.
If you keep your requests to 1 every 1.725 seconds (I'm using 1.75 to be safe) you will be fine. I use the hi-res timer in Perl to do it and it works great.
