Google Local Search API

Question

hey guys

couple of quick questions

1) In the local search results - we can get a lot of parameters like street title, address, city, state, lat, long , url etc - In order for me to uniquely identify this record - can I consider URL to be unique to this address or concatenation of latitude and longitude

Ref: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/reference.html#_class_GlocalResult

2) In terms of usage, depending upon what user enters, I'm displaying a list of local business for the user to choose. Now when a user selects a particular business address - is it legal for me to store that business address along with lat and longitude information in my database for future look ups. I've seen a lot of blogs talking about storing the lat/long info but just want to be sure that i'm not violating and google rules.

Thanks

Answer 1

1. The url is probably unique, but I cannot see any guarantee that it will not change. Why don't you use a surrogate key to uniquely identify the records?

2. Note article 1.4 in the Terms of Use:

   You agree that when using the Service, You will not, and will not permit users or other third parties to:

   ...

   copy, store, archive, republish, or create a database of Google Search Results, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, except that You may display Google Search Results that have been "clipped" through an end user-requested action, provided that You comply with the attribution requirements described in Section 2.3 below;

   The Google Maps API has similar restrictions. I would suggest getting in touch with Google regarding this issue. (IANAL).