Google Analytics API request returns captcha?

Question

Since yesterday, our connection to the Google Analytics API returns an HTML page with... captcha. Does anyone experience something like this?

We use the API with the PHP library. Our code for retrieving a report (its wrapped in our own class but it uses the google/apiclient package):

// Create analytics
$this->analytics = new \Google_Service_AnalyticsReporting($this->client);

// Create the ReportRequest object.
$request = new \Google_Service_AnalyticsReporting_ReportRequest();
$request->setViewId($view_id);
$request->setDateRanges($this->dateRanges);
$request->setMetrics( array_values( $this->metrics ) );
$request->setDimensions( array_values( $this->dimensions ) );
$request->setSegments($this->segments);

$body = new \Google_Service_AnalyticsReporting_GetReportsRequest();
$body->setReportRequests( array( $request) );

try {
    $reports = $this->analytics->reports->batchGet( $body );
}
catch(\Google_Service_Exception $e)
{
    echo"Error (1)...\n";
    echo $e->getMessage() . "\n";

    $this->lastError = json_decode($e->getMessage());
    return false;
}

We catch a Google Service Exception, and the message of the error is as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1"><title>https://analyticsreporting.googleapis.com/v4/reports:batchGet</title></head>
<body style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-color: #fff; color: #000; padding:20px; font-size:18px;" onload="e=document.getElementById('captcha');if(e){e.focus();}">
<div style="max-width:400px;">
<hr noshade size="1" style="color:#ccc; background-color:#ccc;"><br>
<form id="captcha-form" action="index" method="post">
To continue, please type the characters below:<br><br>
<img src="/sorry/image?id=14645528721876966739&amp;q=EgSIkL9bGIjOzu4FIhkA8aeDSycUmKeaKy3bPExiN-Ol2PpxQzOfMgFj&amp;hl=en&amp;continue=https://analyticsreporting.googleapis.com/v4/reports:batchGet" border="1" alt="Please enable images"><br><br>
<input type="text" name="captcha" value="" id="captcha" size="12" style="font-size:16px; padding:3px 0 3px 5px; margin-left:0px;"><br><br><br>
<input type="submit" name="btn-submit" value="Submit" style="font-size:18px; padding:4px 0;">
<input type='hidden' name='q' value='EgSIkL9bGIjOzu4FIhkA8aeDSycUmKeaKy3bPExiN-Ol2PpxQzOfMgFj'><input type="hidden" name="continue" value="https://analyticsreporting.googleapis.com/v4/reports:batchGet">
</form>
<hr noshade size="1" style="color:#ccc; background-color:#ccc;">

<div style="font-size:13px;">
<b>About this page</b><br><br>

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network.  This page checks to see if it&#39;s really you sending the requests, and not a robot.  <a href="#" onclick="document.getElementById('infoDiv').style.display='block';">Why did this happen?</a><br><br>

<div id="infoDiv" style="display:none; background-color:#eee; padding:10px; margin:0 0 15px 0; line-height:1.4em;">
This page appears when Google automatically detects requests coming from your computer network which appear to be in violation of the <a href="//www.google.com/policies/terms/">Terms of Service</a>. The block will expire shortly after those requests stop.  In the meantime, solving the above CAPTCHA will let you continue to use our services.<br><br>This traffic may have been sent by malicious software, a browser plug-in, or a script that sends automated requests.  If you share your network connection, ask your administrator for help &mdash; a different computer using the same IP address may be responsible.  <a href="//support.google.com/websearch/answer/86640">Learn more</a><br><br>Sometimes you may be asked to solve the CAPTCHA if you are using advanced terms that robots are known to use, or sending requests very quickly.
</div>

IP address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx<br>Time: 2019-11-19T08:25:44Z<br>URL: https://analyticsreporting.googleapis.com/v4/reports:batchGet<br>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

If anyone experiences this too or has a solution, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Marlon King Marlon King · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-19T11:42:59

This may have been Google applying some safety measures to handle a large spike in traffic. I am also aware they updated their error messages for the API as of the 4th November 2019 which may be why we are now getting this error instead of something else previously.

Email I received from Google:

"we’re upgrading the Google Analytics APIs to a new technical infrastructure stack beginning November 4, 2019. As a result of this change, clients will see some differences in the response error message text for failed API requests."

"If your application or log analysis workflow rely on the specific wording provided in responses of the Management API v3 or Core Reporting API v3, you will need to update the code to reflect the new error response text. Please note that as exact error message wording can change at any time, we strongly discourage hardcoding the specific message text when processing responses from the API."

Today my requests failed and a captcha image was provided in my error log that produced a 404. Error I received:

"Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot."

"The block will expire shortly after those requests stop. In the meantime, solving the above CAPTCHA will let you continue to use our services."

I have since found the service to be back running in small doses without any code changes required.

I suggest to try again and limit the number of requests until the service is back 100%.

Google Analytics API request returns captcha?

1 Answers