AuthorityLabs Partner API

If you need to get SERP(search engine results page) rank information on some keywords, there is a very good solution - AuthorityLabs Partner API. I have successfully used it on one of my projects and I want to share with you some tips on developing functionality to work with it.

AuthorityLabs Partner API is as a REST service. The main API methods are for POSTing keywords that you want to get info on and GETting the information from POSTed keywords. There are 2 different ways of work with POST requests:

• Instant POST request(expensive)
• Delayed POST request(cheaper)

We'll work with Delayed requests.
At first we should think how are we going to work with the Web service. I have chosen to use Apache HttpComponents because it's straightforward and easy to use. To download the library I used the following Maven dependencies:

<dependency>
 <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
 <artifactId>httpcore</artifactId>
 <version>4.2</version>
</dependency>
 <dependency>
 <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
 <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
 <version>4.1.3</version>
</dependency>

Now let's develop method to POST keywords to the AuthorityLabs Partner API.

public class AuthorityLabsTest {
 private static final String AUTHORITYLABS_AUTH_TOKEN = "XXX";
 private static final String AUTHORITYLABS_URL_POST_KEYWORD = "http://api.authoritylabs.com/keywords";

 
  /**
     * Post keyword to the delayed queue of the AuthorityLabs API
     * @param keyword
     * @param engine
     * @param locale
     * @return
     */
 static boolean postKeyword(String keyword, String engine, String locale) {
  HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
  
  HttpPost post = new HttpPost(AUTHORITYLABS_URL_POST_KEYWORD);
  try {
   List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(1);
   nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("auth_token", AUTHORITYLABS_AUTH_TOKEN));
   nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("keyword",keyword));
   nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("engine", engine));
   nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("locale", locale));  
   post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
   System.out.println("Post keyword; parameters - " + nameValuePairs);
 
   HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);
   BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
     response.getEntity().getContent()));
   String line = "";
   while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
    System.out.println(line);
   }

  } catch (IOException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
   return false;
  }
  return true;
 }
}

Next we need method to GET keyword info.

public class AuthorityLabsTest {
 private static final String AUTHORITYLABS_AUTH_TOKEN = "XXX";
 private static final String AUTHORITYLABS_URL_POST_KEYWORD = "http://api.authoritylabs.com/keywords";
 private static final String AUTHORITYLABS_URL_GET_RESULTS = "http://api.authoritylabs.com/keywords/get.json?keyword={0}&auth_token={1}&engine={2}&locale={3}&rank_date={4}";

 static boolean postKeyword(String keyword, String engine, String locale) {
    ...
 }
 
 /**
  * Gets JSON results from the AuthorityLabs API
  * @param keyword
  * @param engine
  * @param locale
  * @param stringPostKeywordDate
  * @return
  */
 static InputStream getKeywordResults(String keyword, String engine, String locale, String stringPostKeywordDate) {
  String urlPattern = AUTHORITYLABS_URL_GET_RESULTS;
  String url = MessageFormat.format(urlPattern, keyword, AUTHORITYLABS_AUTH_TOKEN, 
    engine, locale, stringPostKeywordDate);
  //Prepare URL (e.g. replace spaces with %20 etc)
  try {
   url = URIUtil.encodeQuery(url);
  } catch (URIException e1) {
   e1.printStackTrace();
   return null;
  }
  System.out.println("Get keyword results; url - " + url);
  
  HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
  HttpGet get = new HttpGet(url); 
  HttpResponse response;
  try {
   response = client.execute(get);
   System.out.println(response.getStatusLine());   
   return response.getEntity().getContent();
  } catch (Exception e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }   
  return null;
 }
}

Note that we need to encode URL in order to be able to get results. To choose correct engine and locale for that engine please check the documentation on AuthorityLabs API.

That's the core of the work with AuthorityLabs API.

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