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Recommended Sites API
1. Summary
The Recommended Sites data set includes links to federal, state and local websites that are boosted to the top of organic search results for “long-tail” queries to improve the relevancy of web search results. Recommend Sites are editorially reviewed by humans on the SBA.gov team, and represent the best resources when an individual is seeking information on a particular keyword.
The API is RESTful and output formats are available in XML and JSON. There is a DTD for the XML output available.
2. Request Methods
All Recommended Sites
- URL template:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/all_sites/keywords.FORMAT
- Example URL:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/all_sites/keywords.xml
- Parameters:
-
FORMAT
- Either
xml
orjson
, case sensitive.
Recommended Sites by Keyword
- URL template:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/keywords/KEYWORD.FORMAT
- Example URL:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/keywords/contracting.xml
- Parameters:
-
KEYWORD
- A search keyword (case insensitive, URL-encoded).
FORMAT
- Either
xml
orjson
, case sensitive.
Recommended Sites by Category
- URL template:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/category/CATEGORY.FORMAT
- Example URL:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/category/managing%20a%20business.xml
- Parameters:
-
CATEGORY
- A category name (case insensitive, URL-encoded). May be one of the following:
- managing a business
- financing a business
- registering a business
- starting a business
- business law
- other
FORMAT
- Either
xml
orjson
, case sensitive.
Recommended Sites by Master Term
- URL template:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/category/MASTER_TERM.FORMAT
- Example URL:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/category/managing%20a%20business.xml
- Parameters:
-
MASTER_TERM
- A master search keyword (case insensitive, URL-encoded).
FORMAT
- Either
xml
orjson
, case sensitive.
Recommended Sites by Domain
- URL template:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/keywords/domain/DOMAIN.FORMAT
- Example URL:
http://api.sba.gov/rec_sites/keywords/domain/irs.xml
- Parameters:
-
DOMAIN
- A second-level domain name, without the .gov, .com, .net, etc. For example, to search IRS.gov, use “
irs
” as the domain parameter. FORMAT
- Either
xml
orjson
, case sensitive.
3. Response Format
XML Format
The XML response is well-documented in the XML DTD for this document type. The document root element's tag-name is <sites>
. Each record within the document is contained within a <site>
element, containing sub-elements as detailed in the JSON Format documentation below. Each of these sub-elements contains its relevant data as Parsed Character Data.
JSON Format
The JSON response consists of an array of anonymous objects, each of which represents a site. Each of these objects has the following properties:
Field Name | Description | Type | Max. Length |
Possible Values |
---|---|---|---|---|
title |
The title of the website the url points to. | String | 550 | |
url |
The URL of the recommended site. | String | 500 | |
description |
A brief description of the recommended site. | String | 700 | |
keywords |
A comma-delimited list of keywords in the search for which this recommended site url is returned. The keywords can be a single word or a phrase. The phrase must match the non-geographic search term in order for the recommended site url to be returned. | String | 8192K | |
category |
The name of any of the established categories for pages on SBA.gov. | String | 45 | managing a business |
orders |
A numeric field defining the order in which the recommended sites will be displayed. | Integer | 11 | |
master_term |
A standard search word or phrase assigned to group of synonyms. | String | 700 |