Do websites such as www.webdatah.com perform legitimate queries to the Google API to retrieve backlinks from an automated service or are in violation of Google's terms of service? As far as I can see they should be in violation, but they manage to operate consistently. Are they employing black hat tactics (such as proxies) to prevent google from blocking them or is there a legitimate way to do this from an automated application? Note: I do not wish to index the results, just be able to check the backlinks of a given site.