yahoo maps service backend fetch error 403

By techdruid on September 20, 2011 in Troubleshooting

I have tried replying directly to the following post on Yahoo.

http://developer.yahoo.com/forum/General-Discussion-at-YDN/Yahoo-API-Map-Service-backend-fetch/1316489876850-608baec5-f30d-4c11-be32-316ec4ee25f5

Unfortunately, Yahoo just responds by redisplaying the “reply” form and doesn’t accept my response. I am therefore posting this information on my blog to try and see if others are having this same problem.

Basically, as the poster above states, I’ve been using this service for as long as I can remember. And suddenly, last night (20-Sep-2011) the service stopped working. I’m sure there is some news somewhere about Yahoo not supporting this service, but searching google for the 403 error does not produce any useful results.

I took the quick/easy way out. I switched over to using the Google geo-coding service documented at the following address.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/#GeocodingResponses

Perhaps someone can shed light on why the Yahoo service has stopped working? I’m suspecting it could be because I was accessing it from an Internet/IntRAnet site that is not publicly visible. But what do I know? 😉

7 Responses to yahoo maps service backend fetch error 403

Matthew September 20, 2011 at 11:14 pm #

We’re seeing this issue too. No changes have been made to our site and all of a sudden the Yahoo service is returning this error.
Dave September 21, 2011 at 12:40 am #

Yahoo might be shutting it down. They have on their site:

Yahoo! is shutting down the Traffic Rest API and the Traffic RSS Feed. There is no transition to a new or existing Yahoo! Traffic API at this time. Although the current APIs are going away, we will announce improvements to our Maps APIs in early 2011, which will include updated traffic features.

It stopped working for me as well.
isuelt September 21, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

Same here. It just stopped working. Been using this for years.
Dave September 21, 2011 at 2:46 pm #

This web page seems to explain it all.

http://thetechjournal.com/internet/yahoo-shutting-down-maps-apis.xhtml
techdruid September 26, 2011 at 4:10 pm #

I ran an interactive test today, and the yahoo api responded with a Lat/Lon. I’m not sure what’s up with it suddenly working again.

I’m considering setting up dual-usage in my scripts. Using both Yahoo and Google. Possibly even more, like the webgis.usc.edu service. Then, when one fails, it will just use one of the other services out there. Actually, more than just considering, I’m coding up the prototype now.
Mike September 30, 2011 at 5:08 pm #

They closed down the old one. You’ll need to update your code to using Yahoo PlaceFinder (or google maps api).

Announcement:
http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2011/06/yahoo-maps-apis-service-closure-announcement-new-maps-offerings-coming-soon/

Yahoo PlaceFinder:
http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/

Just updated my ancient program with Yahoo PlaceFinder. Pretty much just the request url change and parsing the xml response differently. Their “precision” value changed to “quality” and that was about it.
Dave October 5, 2011 at 6:04 pm #

Yahoo Placefinder doesn’t show traffic alerts though right? I’m trying to get the traffic alerts that the old Yahoo API used to use.