Yahoo API has gone 404!

Just today I noticed that my Perl scripts (including Warrick) running the Yahoo Web Search API were consistently returning zero results. I tried running the scripts from different networks, but had the same problem. I scanned the Yahoo API web pages to see if they were alerting us to any problems and nothing.

So I though maybe I should download the most recent version of the API just in case something has changed. I tried downloading yws-1.2.tgz and yws-1.2.zip but got the same error page (right).

I also tried sending an email to the Yahoo list (yws-search-web@yahoogroups.com) but never received the email as a member of the group. Something is really fishy…

Update on 3/13/06:

Yahoo finally admitted the error today. Acording to Toby Elliott, the Yahoo API guy, the error is due to a "default variable in the perl library" and a fix should be out soon. Several other developers complained to the Yahoo list serve, but all the emails were held until today. One noted that the error first appeared on Mar 3. That means it took 10 days for the API error to be acknowledged. Ouch! Was it because Toby was on vacation? ;)

Something else strange: a few days ago I did a Google search for "yahoo api" which resulted in two hits: one pointing to developer.yahoo.net and one to developer.yahoo.com. The sites appeared to be mirrors of each other. One big difference though, the download page for the .com resulted in 404s (see above) but the .net site didn't. A googling of "yahoo api" today just shows only the .net listing. I guess I caught them in the middle of their migration from one TLD to another.

Update on 3/27/06:

I was able to find a working Perl library for Yahoo's Web Search API at CPAN.