Google Announced New Update for Search Results: Update on the Autocomplete API

Are you ready to say goodbye to the Autocomplete API of Google? Well, ready or not, Google is shutting it down on August 10, 2015. This may affect how your favorite keyword tool works.

Why It Needs to Be Blocked?

According to Google, the unsupported API are being used in a way that it’s either useful or not to users. With that being said, Google thinks that the autocomplete API is no longer providing benefits to users, in addition to being paired to its web search.

Google built it as a complement to web search. It has never intended to exist separately from user search queries. This means that the service was originally designed solely for the use of web search within the Google Search context.

Webmasters creating several games and sites that were created through API might be greatly affected. The idea of guessing what words would exactly come up for certain combination of words would soon be gone.

Google says that in order to maintain the autocomplete’s integrity, which is a part of Search, it will prohibit unauthorized access to unpublished autocomplete API. When Google stops you from using unpublished API on said date, you’re going to find another method to use autocomplete API.

For some, using unpublished APIs can be too risky. But it’s quite tempting to use them. The reason for this is that you can spend more time doing something as there’s no need for your server to the same job as the Google’s API’s. However, Google considers it as stealing.

But Google isn’t really upset that some programmers are using its servers without its permission. However, the company is really upset that its autocomplete is being used for search engine optimization.

Some webmasters suggested that you can still make use of the API by switching to Google’s Custom Search Engine. You can still use its autocomplete but not in a way that’s disconnected from the search. In other words, this isn’t an exact alternative.

One challenge for Google is that securing a public API can be very difficult. They can offer tokens to certain registered user. But it isn’t foolproof.

Unfortunately, Google hasn’t completely provided how it is going to restrict access to its autocomplete API. For webmasters, it would be very interesting to find out how the company will go about this difficult problem. And for most programmers, it can be an easy thing to promise but it can be more difficult to deliver.