Use of AJAX API to obtain hit rates for research

[Rajiv]

This is more of a "legal" question than a technical question, but I
couldn't find an appropriate Google person to email and am hoping
someone here can help.

Basically, I am continuing on a project to run a variety of queries
and use the "number of hits" returned from these queries to draw
implications on the content of the pages. In a very simplistic
summary, the idea is that looking at the number of pages where a
target term occurs along with an adjective (relative to number of
pages where target term occurs without the adjective) tells us
something about the target term.

Anyway, I just need to know whether writing a script to use the API to
capture a series of "number of hits" and save them to a file would be
a violation of the new terms and conditions of revised API.

If it helps, this is purely for academic purposes (I am a Professor at
the University of Minnesota Duluth) and this will be used only for a
publication explaining the process of deriving meaning from textual
data using hit rates.

- Rajiv Vaidyanathan
Professor of Marketing
University of Minnesota Duluth

[jgeerdes [AJAX APIs "Guru"]]

The question would be, how are you intending to do this? As long as
your application is going to be web-based and freely-available to the
public, I think you'll generally be okay. Because I'm not a legal
expert, though, if you have any doubts at all, I would strongly
recommend contacting a lawyer. Otherwise, to do what you're wanting
to do, since the API doesn't deliver the kinds of metrics you're going
to need, you'll probably have to make it a server-side application
which utilizes the REST side of the API, rather than the AJAX. You
would then parse out the urls, poll them with something like cURL
(php) or UserAgent (Perl), and process the content yourself.

Jeremy R. Geerdes
Effective website design & development
Des Moines, IA

For more information or a project quote:
http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com
jgee...@mchsi.com

If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights
Wesleyan Church!

[Rajiv]

Well, according to my programmer, this can be done using the
estimatedResultCount element in the JSON object.

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje

So, anyone have contact information for someone at Google to make sure
they are okay with this?

-Rajiv


On Jul 3, 4:55 pm, "jgeerdes [AJAX APIs \"Guru\"]"

<jgeer...@mchsi.com> wrote:
> The question would be, how are you intending to do this?  As long as
> your application is going to be web-based and freely-available to the
> public, I think you'll generally be okay.  Because I'm not a legal
> expert, though, if you have any doubts at all, I would strongly
> recommend contacting a lawyer.  Otherwise, to do what you're wanting
> to do, since the API doesn't deliver the kinds of metrics you're going
> to need, you'll probably have to make it a server-side application
> which utilizes the REST side of the API, rather than the AJAX.  You
> would then parse out the urls, poll them with something like cURL
> (php) or UserAgent (Perl), and process the content yourself.
>
> Jeremy R. Geerdes
> Effective website design & development
> Des Moines, IA
>
> For more information or a project quote:http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com

> jgeer...@mchsi.com

[jgeerdes [AJAX APIs "Guru"]]

Benjamin Lisbakken is a member of the dev team, also mhl, derek, and
vadim (all of which frequent the group). But unless I'm
misunderstanding what you're looking for, I don't know that your
programmer is right. Yes, you can obtain an estimated number of
results that the Google search hit, but that doesn't tell you how many
times the keyword appeared on that page, and in association with what
adjectives. It just tells you that at least one of the words in your
search phrase appeared at least one time on x number of documents in
Google's index.

Jeremy R. Geerdes
Effective website design & development
Des Moines, IA

For more information or a project quote:
http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com

jgee...@mchsi.com

[Rajiv]

Aha! Yes, that is correct. But that is where our algorithm comes
into it. Our research looks at how you can use simple hit rate data
from a variety of searches (e.g., % of pages with term and descriptor
relative to pages with term but without descriptor) to make inferences
about the content of the text.

Anyway, can one of you Google gentlemen just reassure me that just
getting the hit rates for a series of search terms is not a aviolation
of the terms of use?

Thank you!

- Rajiv

On Jul 3, 11:13 pm, "jgeerdes [AJAX APIs \"Guru\"]"

<jgeer...@mchsi.com> wrote:
> Benjamin Lisbakken is a member of the dev team, also mhl, derek, and
> vadim (all of which frequent the group). But unless I'm
> misunderstanding what you're looking for, I don't know that your
> programmer is right. Yes, you can obtain an estimated number of
> results that the Google search hit, but that doesn't tell you how many
> times the keyword appeared on that page, and in association with what
> adjectives. It just tells you that at least one of the words in your
> search phrase appeared at least one time on x number of documents in
> Google's index.
>
> Jeremy R. Geerdes
> Effective website design & development
> Des Moines, IA
>
> For more information or a project quote:http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com

> jgeer...@mchsi.com