Search API common problems

We're suddenly picking up a lot more people using the search API. There are a few problems that people run into, and they are our fault. Sorry.

The first problem is that there is a parameter missing from the doc: on the search results calls, the "apimode=1" parameter is required. If you don't pass it, you will get HTML and not XML! This will be fixed on the next site update we do. Just send apimode=1 on everything, it can't hurt :-)

The next problem is that sometimes the quota allocation breaks, and your quota is set to zero. If you are only able to do 1 or 2 searches and then you get "over quota" errors, please use the feedback link on kayak.com to say this:

"my quota is broken on the search API. my email address for the developer is *insert email here*. Tell billo to get off his fat ass and fix my quota!"

(you may substitute "chiseled, Brad Pitt-like" for "fat" if you want to score points)

Finally there is some confusion over the 1000/day default quota. It's really 1000 searches/day, distributed over 24 hours, bucketed by whole hour. So you have 41 searches per hour when the quota is 1000/day.