Are we charged Quota for failed API attempts?

[Darrin]

Hi all,

Are we charged Quota for failed API attempts?

For example:
I use setKeywordListSingleMaxCPC and send 50 keywords.
One of the KW's is rejected with the message
"Keyword ID does not exist in AdGroup".
Am I charged 500 Quota Units (50 x 10) for this?

Thanks in advance,
Darrin

[Kunaal]

I believe you are, because You have contacted the server with a
command, if the command has not been formed correctly(i.e the Id you
sent was incorrect) you will be charged for its execution even though
the action you wanted did not take place.
Hope that helps
Kunaal

[Darrin]

That's what I think we are seeing... The problem with being charged
for the entire batch is that they reject the entire batch. Which
means I have to resubmit the remaing 49 (i.e. 50 - 1 bad keyword) and
incure the cost of that batch too. It's a very effecient way to
consume all our Quota real fast. :-(

Thanks,
Darrin

[Kunaal]

True, but look at it as more of an incentive for us to make sure that
the keywords we submit on the first go are as correct as possible so as
to minimize the server returning an error :)

[Patrick Chanezon]

Thanks Kunaal.
Darrin, yes you are charged the whole quota cost for a list operation even if it fails globally because a single element in the list fails.

This is documented at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/adwords_api_error_codes.html

If a request results in an error, the requested operations count against your quota unless the error is due to a system failure on Google's side.

In your case the bad id is not a system failure on Google's side.

P@

--
Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist
http://blog.chanezon.com/
http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/

[Peer]

What if one of the keywords in the batch is rejected because of a
Google Ad policy problem?
Will this also charge me for the whole batch?

Or will the keywords not posing any problems go online, and then we
just need to send the last keyword again this time with an
excemptionRequest?

Peer Jakobsen
eSearchVision

[Darrin]

Ah, it's documented... I missed that. Thanks Patrick (and everyone)
for the response. It makes sense to me... was just hoping I was wrong.

Darrin

[Patrick Chanezon]

Hi Peer,
sorry if my answers are not what you'd like to hear:-)

On 10/13/05, Peer <peer.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

What if one of the keywords in the batch is rejected because of a
Google Ad policy problem?
Will this also charge me for the whole batch?

Yes.

Or will the keywords not posing any problems go online,

No.

and then we
just need to send the last keyword again this time with an
excemptionRequest?

Peer Jakobsen
eSearchVision

P@

[Peer]

Hi Patrick,
Is this behaviour going to change, because it is not very logic when
there is no way you can predict if you are breaking the google ad
policy. A good example would be a client who wants to add thousands of
song-titles and artist-names as keywords. Here the google ad policy
mistankely thinks that some parts of the keywords are violating some
kind of US/CANADA medical act. There is no way that i can predict this
so what would the best practice be? Sending one keyword per API call?
Not a super way of managing my resources and googles resources :-)

Best regards,
Peer Jakobsen

[Patrick Chanezon]

Yes we are aware of this contradiction, since many developers have pointed it in the past. The current behavior of list operation is a lose-lose situation: we certainly want you to use list operation and the current transaction semantics make using them costly in an uncontrollable way.
These days we're considering various ways to change that but cannot commit to anything yet.

If you have any suggestions and proposals about the list operations interface and behavior, feel free to send them in the Forum (I don't guarantee that we will implement any proposal, but at least we will take them into account).

P@

On 10/13/05, Peer < peer.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Patrick Chanezon]

As of today yes you are charged the whole quota cost for a list operation even if it fails globally because a single element in the list fails.

Charging quota for failed operations makes sense since when performing this operation, wether it fails or succeeds you put some load on Google servers. The quota system was put in place in order to share the load fairly between developers.

However for List operations this may seem wrong: you may be charged (listsize x operation cost) for a call that failed because one element of the list was wrong. This disadvantages list operations compared to their unit counterparts, when we want you to use the list operations.

See my recent answer in this Forum to a similar question for details about our plans.

P@

[Peer]

I don't know how much load the ad policy check generates, but you might
add some api methods that can be used to verify the ad policy for lets
say 1 quota per unit, instead of 50 pr kw and 250 pr ad.

Allowing some kind of trusted feed that bypass the ad policy check for
trusted clients would be the perfect solution for some clients. This
works very well with Overture ;-) This could be part of your commercial
developer program.

Peer Jakobsen

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 11:16:02PM -0700, Peer wrote:
> Allowing some kind of trusted feed that bypass the ad policy check for
> trusted clients would be the perfect solution for some clients. This
> works very well with Overture ;-) This could be part of your commercial
> developer program.

Hmmm - like checkKeywordList which has been in the KeywordService.wsdl
file, commented out, for more than a month. Has anyone actually tried
to issue this call?

Rich.

--
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com