v2009 Hack Day Video Preview

Our recent AdWords API Hack Days in San Francisco and New York were a huge success, filled with presentations, question and answer sessions, and one-on-one coding help. We were glad to see that many developers have already started the migration to the v2009 API, and these events were a great way to kick off the process for those just getting started. Don't forget that most v13 services will be turned off on April 22.

We will be posting videos of the presentations on YouTube over the coming weeks, starting this week with Migrating from v13 to v2009 by Adam Rogal. The presentation gives an overview of the suggested migration process, provides some tips and tricks, and includes live coding examples.

This video is the first of many, and if you'd like to get the full experience there is still space available in our upcoming Paris Hack Day. Get more information and register for an upcoming Hack Day.



Best,
- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

v2009 Hack Days Coming to Europe

Thank you to everyone who attended our San Francisco and New York hack days. The response was very enthusiastic and we got a tremendous amount of valuable feedback.

Next up on the schedule are three events in Europe:

London: February 3rd

Paris: February 5th

Hamburg: February 9th

All events will be held in the local Google office and will follow the same format as the US events: an introduction to v2009, technical discussions of the BulkMutateJobService, LocationExtensions, and AdParameters, followed by a chance to migrate some v13 code with Google engineers on hand to help.

Note that these are engineer-only events. The presentations will be highly technical and there will be no activities for attendees who don't plan to write code.

Space is very limited, so sign up now! Get more information and register at: http://sites.google.com/site/v2009hackdays.

New Parameter for Server Side API Calls

Over the last several years, you've helped make Google's AJAX APIs incredibly successful. Not surprisingly, however, there are some people who try to take advantage of these free APIs by using them in ways that they were not designed for, abuse which is prohibited by the Terms of Use. Specifically, some servers are making countless requests - requests not made on the behalf of an end-user - in an attempt to scrape data from the APIs.

To help us discourage this behavior without affecting legitimate developers, we're adding a new parameter to the RESTful interface, userip. With this parameter, developers have the option of supplying the IP address of the end-user on whose behalf they are making the API request. Doing so will help us distinguish this legitimate server-side traffic from the more abusive scraping in which there are no end-users.

Use of this new parameter is *not* required. However, if it is not included with server-side requests, those requests are more likely to be interpreted and automatically blocked as abuse, especially in situations where a server is sending a high volume of traffic to the API. Additional safeguards you can take include setting setting a valid HTTP referer (as required by our Terms of Use) and using an API key. These additional measures will help us contact you in case there are problems with your website or application (sometimes a programming error results in massive traffic, forcing us to block your access if we are unable to contact you). In choosing to utilize this parameter, please be sure that you're in compliance with any local laws, including any laws relating to disclosure of personal information being sent.

Check the documentation for usage of the new parameter. We'd love to hear any comments, questions or problems you're having in the support forum.

Application Token no longer required to use AdWords API

Beginning today, you no longer need to provide us with an AdWords API Application Token to access the AdWords API (v13 and v2009). This change requires no action on your part. The Application Token will simply be ignored if it continues to be included with your API requests. Note that the Developer Token is still required. We hope that this makes your life a bit easier in working with the AdWords API.

As always, we are here to answer your questions, collect feedback, and assist with migration to the v2009 API.

-- Albert Cheng, AdWords API Team

100 days until major v13 sunset

In October of last year we launched the v200909 API and shared with you that the majority of v13 services would be turned off on April 22 of this year. This is a reminder to our developers that less than 100 days are left before most v13 services will be turned off.

As of April 22, 2010, the following v13 services will no longer be accessible:
CampaignService
AdGroupService
CriterionService
AdService
InfoService
KeywordToolService
SiteSuggestionService

The AccountService, TrafficEstimatorService, and ReportService v13 services will continue to be accessible because they are not yet available in the v2009 API. In the coming months, we'll announce the launch dates for these services in the v2009 API and corresponding sunset dates for the v13 services.

Want to learn more about migrating your application to the v2009 API? Review the side-by-side differences between v13 and v2009. Try out the code examples in these client libraries: Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, and PHP. You can also learn more from our Discover v2009 series of blog posts.

As we go into the last 100 days before migration to v2009, please continue to ask us your questions and share your feedback on the AdWords API Developer Forum.