web services - Google Places API error 502 - The server encountered a temporary error

Question

we run a website that obtains location data through the Google Place API. We have 150k daily searches available, which we haven′t met yet as the website has been live for few weeks only. We have suddenly received a 502 error. A notification in the Console says: “The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.”. Is this a temporary error? Is there any suggestions on what we can do? The website hasn’t been available for 40 minutes.

Answer 1

When you receive 5xx status or UNKNOWN_ERROR in the response, you should implement a retrying logic. Google has a following recommendation in their web services documentation:

In rare cases something may go wrong serving your request; you may receive a 4XX or 5XX HTTP response code, or the TCP connection may simply fail somewhere between your client and Google's server. Often it is worthwhile re-trying the request as the followup request may succeed when the original failed. However, it is important not to simply loop repeatedly making requests to Google's servers. This looping behavior can overload the network between your client and Google causing problems for many parties.

A better approach is to retry with increasing delays between attempts. Usually the delay is increased by a multiplicative factor with each attempt, an approach known as Exponential Backoff.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/web-service-best-practices#exponential-backoff

However, if retrying logic with Exponential Backoff doesn't help and the error persists for a long time you should file a bug in Google issue tracker

I hope this addresses your doubt!

UPDATE

There was an issue on Google side yesterday (November 6, 2017), you can refer to the following bug that explains the issue:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/68938173