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apigoogle-apigoogle-booksgoogle-books-api

Google Books API Branding Compliance issue--infoLink returns "Not found" page


I'm working with the Google Books API and the Branding Guidelines state that I have to have a prominent link to the Google Books page for each search result. Cool, I'm fine with that.

However:

  1. saleInfo.buyLink isn't always there in the API response
  2. volumeInfo.infoLink and volumeInfo.canonicalVolumeLink sometimes often go to a "Not Found" page (for example this page, which is supposed to have information for "Lunar Orbiter State Estimation Using Neural Network-based Crater Detection" by Lena Marie Downs [don't ask, I used faker to call the API with random keywords and picked a random result])

So my question becomes, is it my responsibility to try to find workarounds for any of that, in order to be compliant? Or should I just go with what Google Books gives me and call it a day?


Solution

  • I changed my seeds file to only look for Google Books that have an ebook available with &filter=ebooks, and I haven't run into these issues with what it found this time. But I guess the question still stands whether it's up to developers using the API to provide for Google's issues, in case anyone else wants to answer.