I am using flickr api in order to count the how many times a tag occur. I want this information in order to calculate the Normalized Google Distance. I am using this query in my java code:
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&tags=bank
But i don't get good results. For example when i search "bank" the count value is 357439, when i search "credit" the count value is 59288, but when i am search for "bank credit" the count value is only 2. When i searching with the search box at flickr.com for "bank credit" i get a lot of results. But as far as i can see the query it uses is
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=bank%20credit
which i am not able to use through my java code. I am trying to pass this
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&q=bank
and it says
Parameterless searches have been disabled. Please use flickr.photos.getRecent instead How can i solve this problem?
Your generated url is incorrect
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&q=bank
is missing the question mark
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&q=bank
UPDATE based on OP comments:
I didn't see you had the question mark on the top url string. Looking at it again, I did realize you are not passing in any valid parameters. "q" isn't one of the listed parameters on the search api page. Try something like below to search photos with "bank" tag
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&tags=bank
or one with bank in description/title
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=XXXXXXX&format=json&text=bank