Our Partner API currently serves up hundreds of millions of requests per month. Not only are our partners, such as Raven Tools, using it, we are taking advantage of it for getting data into our new interface. Whether you’re new to our Partner API or you’ve been using it for a while, there’s a good chance some of the following tips will help you get more out of our API.

Go Fast

Many people that start out on our API are afraid to POST keywords at full speed. I’ve seen people put 30 second delays between POSTing keywords. The API was built to handle just about anything that can be thrown at it and scales to accommodate the needs of our users. The only real restrictions on how fast you should post are your hourly limits and how fast your servers can process callbacks.

Use Custom Callback URLs

When adding keywords to either our delayed queue or immediate queue, you have the option to send a custom callback URL for us to hit when we have data on that keyword. For the sake of improved performance and easier tracking of callbacks, we recommend passing a URL with an ID that matches up to an ID in your system. This can be a keyword ID or just a POST ID to track which callback matches which post. Running data at scale pretty much makes this a requirement.

Store results in S3

We offer the ability to have full json or html SERPs pushed to your S3 account when you run the first GET for that data. This allows you to store a history of the data requested (beyond the 7 days we guarantee) and gives you a chance to generate all kinds of historical reporting without having to make multiple requests to our API.

Monitor Queue Times and Hourly Limits

While you’re posting keywords to our API, it’s a good idea to know how long the wait could be for data on your keywords. We offer the ability to run a GET request on an endpoint that will give you a rundown of where each queue stands. That request also contains information on your current hourly limits and the count of your POSTs and GETs for the current hour.

https://api.authoritylabs.com/account/{account_id}.json?auth_token={your API key}

Here’s an example of the response we send back –

Leave Room for Priority Posting

If your app requires getting data back quickly from time to time, make sure to leave room within your limits to be able to do priority posting. For example, if you’re constantly hitting your limits for several hours straight and want to get data back quickly for newly added sets of keywords, leave a buffer to allow those to be posted.

Check International Results

Many people don’t realize that our API covers pretty much every country the engines serve. We maintain endpoints for each engine that lists available locations and languages.

Google – https://api.authoritylabs.com/supported/google.json
Yahoo – https://api.authoritylabs.com/supported/yahoo.json
Bing – https://api.authoritylabs.com/supported/bing.json

Check Yandex and Baidu

Not only do we support international locations for the 3 major US engines, we’ve also started pulling data for Yandex and Baidu. They are currently in beta but we have heard great feedback so far. If you’d like to check rankings for those engines, contact us and we’ll work with you on getting set up for that.

Use it to Crawl and Parse Sites

Our Partner API isn’t just a SERP data tool. A few months ago, we added crawling as a service to the API. Using it as a crawler allows you to crawl sites for important data without the need for creating custom scrapers to accommodate each site’s markup. You just tell us what you need and we return nice, clean, structured data for you to process.

Get Signed Up

If you’re not yet using our Partner API but think it could be a useful tool for your company, contact us and we’ll get you set up.