If you use the KeywordDiscovery API, and Python, my pain is your gain. It took me a few hours to get this to work. You can grab it and go. Here’s the function, written in my usual Python Pigdin. I don’t recommend using it without a passing knowledge of Python, but that’s up to you:

def kwdiscovery(username,password,phraselist):
base64string = base64.encodestring('%s:%s' % (username, password))[:-1]
authheader =  "Basic %s" % base64string
apiurl = "http://api.keyworddiscovery.com/queries.php?queries="
separator = "%0D%0A"
counter = 1
for phrase in phraselist:
# make sure there's no funny characters
try:
phrase.decode('ascii')
except UnicodeDecodeError:
continue
phrase = phrase.replace(" ","+")
phrase = phrase.replace("n","")
if (counter > 1):
apiurl = apiurl + separator + phrase
else:
apiurl = apiurl + phrase
counter = counter + 1
apiurl = apiurl + "&empty=1"
req = urllib2.Request(apiurl)
req.add_header("Authorization", authheader)
blah = urllib2.urlopen(req)
# because sometimes, things just go wrong
try:
result = ET.parse(blah)
resultlist = []
lst = result.findall("r")
for item in lst:
this = item.attrib["q"],item.attrib["m"]
resultlist.append(this)
except:
this = "__one of the words in this request
caused an error:",apiurl
resultlist = [this]
return resultlist

And here’s how you’d use the function:

#!/usr/bin/python
import string
import sys
import httplib
import urllib2
from urllib2 import Request, urlopen, URLError
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import base64
f = open('longw.txt','r')
g = open('words_countedlongtail.txt','w')
words = f.readlines()
username = "ENTER KEYWORDDISCOVERY USERNAME HERE"
password = "ENTER KEYWORDDISCOVERY PASSWORD HERE"
start = 0
count = len(words)
while (count > 0):
count = count - 9
end = start + 9
a = words[start:end]
print "sent ",a
resultlist = kwdiscovery(username,password,a)
for l in resultlist:
q = str(l[0])
m = str(l[1])
line = q + "t" + m + "n"
g.write(line)
print "received ",line
start = end
f.close()
g.close()

Who knows, I might even create a web interface one of these days. In my spare time.

Related and recent

• Python web crawler code: Use at your own risk
• Levenshtein link fixer (aka the Levinator) now available
• Why toolbar PageRank is worthless