APIs are a topic dear to my heart. Something that I have never understood is why a company would build an API, only allow developers a couple of thousand calls a day and then leave those APIs out there relatively unsupported for a significant amount of time.
A quick analysis shows all pure natural search APIs are highly restricted. Why is this? As I see it the question is one of upside for the search engine. A non-exhaustive list of negative suggestions include back engineering their algorithm, producing copernicus and dogpile tools which don’t monetize with their adverts and competitors finding ways to compare and improve their rankings.
The search engines do not support their natural search APIs well at all and since there is significant risk and little opportunity to exposing them I don’t see this changing in the near future. The same cannot be said for their revenue driving tools. Panama by Yahoo is a really significant tool and the adwords API and adsense API are well supported.
I think it is clear that search engines promote and support the APIs that offer them more revenue.
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