Helping you help us help you

As I mentioned in a previous post, we've taken several measures to help differentiate legitimate API traffic from bad requests. To help us serve you better, I'm pleased to announce a new way for you to identify your request as harmful. Beginning today, please include the &evil=true parameter in your API requests if you're one of the bad guys.

How does this work in practice? Here's an example query which lets Google know that you're intending to use the API for nefarious purposes. This way, we can respond to your request in the appropriate manner as efficiently as possible.

Note: In order to encourage adoption as quickly as possible, we are requiring all bad requests to include the evil bit by the end of today, April 1.