We have added a new page in our API Dashboard (app.twingly.com) that lets you test the Blog Search API using your web browser.
Just head over to app.twingly.com/search/blog and try it out.
Note that in order to use the Blog Search page, you need an account on app.twingly.com with access to the Blog Search API.
Earlier this year (2017) we released Blog Search API v3 and Blog LiveFeed API v5 to replace our older API versions. We’re now announcing that the older API versions will be shut down 2018-03-31. Our latest API versions are based on feedback from you, our customers, and includes even more metadata than before. The LiveFeed API is much easier to use and includes backend changes that will improve the service availability.
| URL path | Version | Released |
|---|---|---|
/analytics/Analytics.ashx?xmloutputversion=1 |
v1 | 2007-5 |
/analytics/Analytics.ashx?xmloutputversion=2 |
v2 | 2011-5 |
Documentation for latest version, including changes and migration steps.
| URL path | Version | Released |
|---|---|---|
/livefeed.asmx |
v1 | 2007-04 |
/livefeed2.asmx |
v2 | 2010-03 |
/livefeed3.asmx |
v3 | 2010-06 |
/livefeed4.asmx |
v4 | 2011-05 |
Documentation for latest version, including changes and migration steps.
We don’t know how to migrate, can you help us?
Absolutely, contact our support and we’ll do our best to ensure a smooth migration. But start by reading the release post and API documentation.
How do I know which version I’m using?
Look at the URL, basically if it doesn’t start with /blog/ you’re using a deprecated API.
We have released new versions of our Blog APIs. Let me introduce:
Although both Search and LiveFeed have always delivered the same blog posts, either by exposing a search index or a “firehose”, there have been slight differences between the data. With these new versions we have tried to make the APIs more similar and easier to use.
LiveFeed API v5 is now a plain HTTP GET API, just like Search API. No more SOAP.
The post element now includes the same tags for both APIs. It also contains more information about the blog post, than the previous API versions. The new fields added to post are:
id - our unique ID of the blog post (new only for Search v3)blogId - our unique ID of the blogauthor - the author of the blog postlocationCode - the location of the bloginlinksCount - number of links found in other blog posts (only posts that are indexed by Twingly)reindexedAt - timestamp when the post last was changed in our database/indexlinks - all links from the blog post to other resourcestags - blog post tags (may also be referred to as categories)We have prepared fields for future data, these are currently not populated but it will be possible to start delivering this data in the future without breaking any implementations:
images - image URLs from the postscoordinates - Geographical coordinates from blog post (a few posts do have this information)In addition to the common improvements, the following is now true for LiveFeed API:
nextTimestamp, no need to calculate the next timestampBesides the new data that Search API is now delivering, we’ve also made the following improvements.
v3, but with the addition of id to the Search API response, we found out that we needed to document that you can find blog posts by their ID.The .NET client hasn’t yet been updated. If you have the need for a .NET client, don’t hesitate to write about it in the issue. We also gladly accept pull requests.
Update 2017-10-26: The .NET client has now been updated to support v3 too.
For each API, we have documented the changes from the previous version, and listed the steps required to move to the new version. Please check it out:
These new versions are available for all existing, and new, customers. Please upgrade to take advantage of all the improvements. If you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us!
We have made a few changes to our BlogRank algorithm in order to make it easier to distinguish between the blogs at the top of the BlogRank scale.
The previous version of the algorithm had the trait of slowly collecting more and more blogs at the top of the BlogRank scale as our blog index grew larger.
This has now been adjusted, making sure only the few most popular blogs has BlogRank 10. For blogs having a low BlogRank this change won’t be noticeable, but a significant part of the high-ranking blogs will get a lower BlogRank, which can be seen in the graphs below:
Distribution of Swedish blogs with BlogRank 2-6 before and after the change.
Distribution of Swedish blogs with BlogRank 6-10 before and after the change.
For the exact numbers on how much the BlogRank distribution has changed for all Swedish blogs, see the table below:
| BlogRank | Number of blogs before | Number of blogs after |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 101,380 | 104,262 |
| 2 | 4,295 | 3,995 |
| 3 | 2,081 | 1,435 |
| 4 | 1,170 | 609 |
| 5 | 694 | 279 |
| 6 | 429 | 129 |
| 7 | 299 | 54 |
| 8 | 177 | 19 |
| 9 | 141 | 13 |
| 10 | 137 | 8 |
For details about BlogRank, authority and top authority see the ranking documentation.
In both of our APIs, LiveFeed and Search, we truncate certain post’s summary field for stability and performance reasons. It was recently discovered that the truncation had two problems. The first, which would leave undesired HTML entities in the document under certain circumstances. The second, which could potentially cut off the last word when truncation occurred.
On 2016-10-11 we rolled out a fix which remedies both of these flaws. You should not find HTML entities in the summary field anymore (please tell us if you still find any!) and the last word of a truncated summary should be left intact. Note that the vast majority of posts are not, and will never be, truncated.
Another recent improvement is also related to undesired HTML entities. The tags field, only present in Search API, should not contain HTML as of 2016-09-08.