API Terms of Use

The terms governing programmatic access to the MAP verification API.

Last updated: October 2026

1. Scope

These API Terms of Use govern access to and use of the Media Alert Press LLC (“MAP”) API, including the public endpoints under https://mediaalertpress.com/wp-json/map/v1/ — /feed/signals, /ledger/stats, /record/{id} and /record?url= — and the keyed verification endpoint POST https://apimediaalertpress.com/v1/verify, which provide URL and publisher verification and MAP Verified™ context records across seven dimensions: Origin, Attribution, Specificity, Timing, Framing, Context Change, and Information Relationships. The keyed usage endpoint GET https://apimediaalertpress.com/v1/publishers/{publisher_id}/usage returns your weekly count, your plan’s weekly limit and the time the count resets. Paid plans and API keys are covered in Sections 2, 3, 4, 9 and 13 below and in Section 15 of the Terms of Service. These terms supplement, and are subject to, our general Terms of Service.

2. License grant

Subject to these terms, MAP grants you a limited, non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable license to query the API for the purpose of verifying URLs and publishers and retrieving MAP signal data for your own use or for display within your own products, with attribution as required in Section 6. This license does not include any right to sublicense, resell, or redistribute raw API responses as a standalone data product without a separate commercial data license from us. For a paid plan, the license lasts while your subscription is active and ends when the subscription ends, including when we refund your first payment under Section 15.7 of the Terms of Service. A key is issued to the buyer who subscribed and may be used only for that buyer’s own usage.

3. Rate limits

API access is limited to protect service availability for all users. The keyed verification API (POST https://apimediaalertpress.com/v1/verify) applies a weekly plan quota — currently 50 verifications per week on the Plus plan and 250 per week on the Professional plan; limits are set per plan and may change with notice — and returns an HTTP 429 response when the quota is exceeded. The week runs from Monday 00:00 UTC to the next Monday 00:00 UTC, and the count resets at the start of each week; unused verifications do not carry over. A request counts when a result is returned. If the API instead returns the error “Could not analyze URL” (HTTP 502), the request does not count; a result that reports that the page could not be retrieved is still a result, and it counts. The count covers all keys issued for your subscription together. If a renewal payment fails, Section 15.6 of the Terms of Service explains what happens to your plan’s limit, and a change to the weekly quota of a paid plan follows Section 15.4 of the Terms of Service. The free on-site URL checker is limited per IP address. The public GET endpoints are limited per client: /feed/signals — 20 requests per 60 seconds; /ledger/stats — 30 requests per 60 seconds. Requests exceeding these limits receive an HTTP 429 response. These limits may change as we tune the service for reliability; we will not reduce them without reasonable notice to customers on a paid plan.

4. Prohibited uses

You may not: resell, sublicense, or redistribute raw API data as a standalone product without a commercial data license; scrape, crawl, or otherwise circumvent the API to extract data in bulk outside the documented endpoints and rate limits; open more than one subscription or account to avoid a weekly limit; give or share an API key with any other person or organization, or resell or sublicense an API key or access to the API; reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract our verification methodology or underlying code beyond what is disclosed on our methodology page; use the API to build a directly competing verification or scoring service; or use the API in any way that violates applicable law or infringes the rights of others.

5. Intellectual property

MAP Verified™ and MAP Context™ are trademarks of Media Alert Press LLC. The API, its documentation, and our verification methodology are our proprietary property. MAP ledger statistics made available at https://mediaalertpress.com/wp-json/map/v1/ledger/stats are published as open data under CC-BY 4.0; all other API output, including record and feed data, remains subject to these terms.

6. Attribution

If you publish or display MAP Verified™ context records or signal data obtained through the API, you must attribute Media Alert Press LLC / MAP Verified™ as the source.

7. Disclaimer of warranties

The API and all data it returns are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranty of any kind, express or implied. MAP does not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted, or error-free availability of the API. Context records are produced automatically by rule-based extraction code that reads a page’s HTML and metadata; no generative AI model writes record text. Each record is a point-in-time snapshot and is informational in nature; extraction is structural and can miss or misread information on a page. Records are not certified fact, legal determinations, or professional advice, and MAP does not warrant their accuracy or completeness. You are responsible for checking any result against other sources before relying on it for a consequential decision.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Media Alert Press LLC’s aggregate liability for any claim arising from your use of the API will not exceed the greater of the fees you paid us for API access in the twelve months before the claim, or $100. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits or data, arising from your use of or inability to use the API. This limitation does not apply to liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud.

9. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your API access at any time, with or without notice, for violation of these terms, for abusive or excessive use, for non-payment where a paid plan applies, or to protect the security or integrity of the service. You may stop using the API at any time, but stopping use does not cancel a paid plan; to cancel, follow Section 15.5 of the Terms of Service. When a paid-plan subscription ends, whether by cancellation at the end of the paid period, by a refund of the first payment under Section 15.7 of the Terms of Service, or because Stripe ends it after failed payments, the API keys issued for it are deactivated and stop working. If a renewal payment fails, Section 15.6 of the Terms of Service explains what happens to your plan’s limit and when your keys stop working. Sections covering intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and governing law survive termination.

10. Governing law

These API Terms of Use are governed by Wyoming law, consistent with our Terms of Service. Disputes are subject to the arbitration and injunctive-relief provisions of our Terms of Service.

11. Access and support

To request API access or higher rate limits, or for any other support question, contact legal@mediaalertpress.com. For billing, API key, cancellation and refund questions, write to info@mediaalertpress.com; we aim to reply within 2 business days (a target, not a guarantee).

12. Contact

Media Alert Press LLC, 15050 Elderberry Lane, Fort Myers, FL 33907. Email: legal@mediaalertpress.com | Phone: (239) 722-9982

13. API keys and paid plans

Plus and Professional plans are bought and managed as described in Section 15 of the Terms of Service, including renewal, cancellation, refunds and taxes. After Stripe confirms your payment, we email one API key and your publisher ID to the address you entered at checkout. The key is shown only in that email. Our database stores only a one-way hash of the key, not the key itself, and we do not display a key again.

You are responsible for keeping your key confidential, for all use of it, and for entering an email address that you control and monitor. Do not publish the key or place it in public code or in pages that visitors can read. A key is issued to the buyer who subscribed and may be used only for that buyer’s own usage. We are not responsible for a key delivered to an address that you entered incorrectly or to a mailbox you do not control, but we will try to help.

If you lose your key or think someone else has it, write to info@mediaalertpress.com from the address you used at checkout, or reply to the key email. We confirm that the request comes from the person who controls that address, deactivate the old key and email a new key to that address. There is no self-service key replacement at this time, so this is done by hand: we aim to complete it within 2 business days of your request (a target, not a guarantee). We send a replacement key only to the address used at checkout.

We may deactivate a key if we believe it has been exposed, shared in breach of these terms, or misused. A key is also deactivated when the subscription it was issued for ends (Section 9).