Tom_Dalton - 5:13 pm on Mar 8, 2005 (gmt 0)

Yahoo has been doing something like this for a long time -- isn't their 'query limit' something like 200 in one hour?

It sounds like Google is trying to be a bit more intelligent about things, so a company with 30 people running behind the same firewall doesn't accidentally trip the filter.

It's interesting that this is becoming necessary, though. As scripting becomes more and more accessible to people, Google and other major 'free' service providers have to respond with actual service limits.

It's part of a move towards a more rational business plan, I suppose. Maybe this will move Google in the direction of an actual, subscription-based API as well -- so people who want to do rank checking will pay for the bandwidth they use. If Google really can scale their services indefinitely, this would make a great deal of sense to me.