This has been brought this up in a previous thread, but I want to give
it more attention, because I see it as a serious issue.

The way the API limits use to a particular *directory*, instead of a
particular *site*, is too limiting.

For example, on chicagocrime.org, every crime reported in Chicago has
its own URL. It looks like this:

http://www.chicagocrime.org/2005/jun/14/12am/hl419247/

Each crime page has (had) a Google map on it. With the API, that's not
possible, because the API limits a key to a directory. I would have to
register a specific API key for each crime in the system.

About 1,000 crimes get added each day.

The problem is that this setup "punishes" clean, pretty URLs such as
the ones I'm using. If I used ugly abominations such as
http://www.chicagocrime.org/?crime=2005/jun/14/12am/hl419247/, it would
work as is. But that would be an ugly abomination.

Yes, I could use iframes, but those aren't ideal. That would require
separate server-side code that's unnecessarily complex.

I'm not sure what the goal of the directory limit is, but in this
particular case it doesn't make sense. Please let the API be used on a
per-*site* basis instead of a per-directory basis.

I know it's ugly, but you can still make the url almost the same as
original by doing it like this..
http://www.chicagocrime.org/?jun/14/12am/hl419247/

Nooooo!

This is the same problem I'm running into. I'm unable to make my URLs
look nice. I hope they get the key system worked out quickly. I'd like
to take my site live sometime soon, but I want it to look spiffy also.

FWIW, this would also open up some creative uses of GMaps on Blogger,
by allowing maps in blog entries. (Under Blogger, main and archive
pages appear at top-level; individual post pages in year/month
subdirectories; so one GMaps key won't cover a post for all URLS it
appears on.)

Bret did mention in one of the previous posts that they are looking
into how they can better the API key system.

I've run into the problem that since I registered my api key without
the www in the domain name any time you use the www in the url it
rejects the user.  If google must limit it to a directory I just hope
they remove this limitation so both http://www.sitename.com/maps/ and
http://sitename.com/maps/ works.

I also support the domain based API vs. the director-based version.

http://metrofreefi.com has at least 50 different subdomains, plus the
www additions, plus the subdirectory issue with individual locations.

I get around this by embedding the map in an iframe hitting a dynamic
page that is in a dir that you have the kye for. Using iframes makes me
feel on the unclean side, but it gets around the problem.

See this thread:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thr...

I posted a tidy, basic scipt to solve that problem.

Bret has also addressed this earlier...  No solution yet, but it's
encouraging to know the team is on it.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thr...

I think one big part of the reason is for hosting sites like
geocities.com, livejournal.com, etc.  Obviously a key won't work for
the whole domain.

One thing you should look at is mod_rewrite (assuming you are using
Apache) to silently rewrite your directory URL as a query URL.  Here's
the first tutorial I pulled off a Google search:
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Apache/Search-Engine-Friendly-URLs-with-mo...

mod rewrite doesn't help, unfortunately.  It sees the rewritten urls as
real subdirectories