Why IP based Rate Limit for making yahoo API calls?

We are providing Inbound link checking using yahoo site explorer API.

Last few days this php based program was not working.

After doing more analysis I came to know that this issue is due to the Rate Limiting for Yahoo! Search Web Services.

It seems yahoo is imposing limit based on IP address. And, it looks like the IP address of the server which hosted our program exceeds the limit as it is a shared hosting. Someone else also might have made yahoo api calls.

In the yahoo developer site it has been mentioned as below.

Our service rate limits are imposed as a limit on the number of API calls made per IP address during a specific time window. If your IP address changes during that time period, you may find yourself with more "credit" available. However, if someone else had been using the address and hit the limit, you'll need to wait until the end of the time period to be allowed to make more API calls.

I am just wondering why they are doing this ineffective way of limiting the API calls.

Actually, they are providing appid for every user to make the API call.

I think they can manage limiting of the API calls effectively using this appid. I couldn't understand why they are considering IP address instead of this appid for limiting the API calls.

Anyway, there should be some solid reason for doing IP based restriction which I couldn't understand currently.

If anybody knows the reason you can share it here thro' comment section.

To solve this issue I have changed the hosting server as it will change the IP address time being. Now our inbound link checking program is working correctly.
But anyway it may face issue later as this server is also a shared hosting server. Please let us know (qualitypointmail@gmail.com) if you face any difficulty in using this inbound checking program/service.

You can enter the URL in the below input box for getting inbound links.

If you are having any suggestion for improving this program you can mention it here thro' comments.

Fewdays before I have mentioned about Yahoo pipe blocking ip address of Google feedburner. These type of behaviours from Yahoo remind us that yahoo is going to be merged/partnered with microsoft.

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