| A quick summary and a bit of info: Yes, Google pulled the plug on the web search AJAX API and replaced it with Custom Search Engine (CSE). The new API does allow you to search the entire web and is near identical to the old which is good, but has the 100 queries/day limitation. This is bad and a show-stopper for a lot of people. Here's what I've learned: 1. You can request more units but no one has responded to me in any way since Nov. 1. 2. The form to request a higher quota asks you if you're a Google Site Search customer. That makes me think that it may make a difference to be a customer of a paid service they have.
(FYI: Google Site Search is apparently a different name for Enterprise Custom Search which I'm hoping is the same technology as CSE and will allow you to search the web.) 3. If you want to BUY the super high volume Site Search service as we are willing to do, you have to communicate with the Sales team, but no one has responded to us on that request either. 4. Another interesting approach that I'll try soon is this: CSE gives you the API to actually create a custom search engine on the fly. But this requires separate Google logins and some work in implementing the ClientLogin authentication business. At the end, you're still limited to 100 queries/day but at least it is "per client". I hope someone from Google is reading this and can shed some light on the issue. |