Hello, I have someone developing for me an application using Google AJAX Search API and I would like to make sure that it's not going to violate the TOS. Here's how the application works: The application gets an URL from the user, extracts text from this URL and makes searches for multiple text fragments using Google API (meaning makes multiple queries). Then it orders the URLs by how often they appear overall in the results (for example, if we made 10 queries and www.example.com was in results of all of them, then it will be on top of our list). The URLs which have frequency (how often they appear in the results) lower than 20% are not displayed. The user can see the set of URLs sorted by this frequency descending. The initial URL is not displayed in the results. We do not display it exactly like Google does. We display them just as a set of URLs plus we add some icons indicating what was the frequency of each URL. Also, we do not modify the resulting URLs although we are planning to do so to show the user (by highlighting) what part of the source URL is contained in the resulting URLs. The question is: does it violate TOS? Here's the TOS I refer to: http://code.google.com/intl/ru/apis/ajaxsearch/terms.html The particular paragraph is: "1.3 Appropriate Conduct and Prohibited Uses. The Service may be used only for services that are accessible to your end users without charge. You agree that you will not, and you will not permit your users or other third parties to: (a) modify or replace the text, images, or other content of the Google Search Results, including by (i) changing the order in which the Google Search Results appear, (ii) intermixing Search Results from sources other than Google, or (iii) intermixing other content such that it appears to be part of the Google Search Results; or (b) modify, replace or otherwise disable the functioning of links to Google or third party websites provided in the Google Search Results." Thanks.
I think you answered your own question. The TOS specifically states you cannot change the order. If your displaying results, from a google query, you CAN report other information seperately. Maybe you can get around that by not displaying the full results set, just a statistical view of the results with the ability to click through to a destination? Hope that makes sense and good luck with your app. I too am working on a solution by using the Goog API. I'm fortunate that I do not need to change the order of the results.
I agree with the above, you answered your own question: The TOS specifically states you cannot change the order. If your displaying results, from a google query, you CAN report other information seperately. Maybe you can get around that by not displaying the full results set, just a statistical view of the results with the ability to click through to a destination?