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 or json, 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 or json, 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 or json, 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 or json, 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 or json, 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: