Different errors (quota, disabled, bad API key, or none) when loading Google Maps API JavaScript

Question

We ported our site to Google maps, but we get different errors when loading a map using the JavaScript Maps API (v3 of course). Other times the map loads correctly. The two most prominent errors are:

"Google has disabled use of the Maps API for this application. See the Terms of Service for more information http://www.google.com/intl/en_US/help/terms_maps.html." (JS Alert)

And:

"This site has exceeded its daily quota for maps. If you are the creator of this site, please visit the documentation to learn more." (this is a DOM overlay)

Live minimal example: This code is not yet live but there's a minimal example here: http://mappat.com/maptest.php. It is simply Google's own Hello World example with our key filled in and even that gives problems.

Network traffic inspection: I noticed the first error is shown when 'AuthenticationService.Authenticate' fails (returns [0,5,0]), the second when 'QuotaService.recordEvent' returns [0,null,0]. These are remote calls from within the SDK and I don't know if these details are relevant.

What we tried: Billing is enabled by the way and we stay way below our quota limits. I tried a lot of things already, new key, waiting a few days, turning the Maps API off and on again in the console, etc. I filled in the allowed referrers but also left it open to allow others. No difference.

I don't dare to start a new project in de dev console because this whole thing started when I did actually just that because I had (different) problems with the server-key. That server part is now working flawlessly btw, kind of ironically.

[Edit: I just tried to leave out the API key when loading the JS maps file, which, fingers crossed, seems to work. But now the server-side calls to places/searchtext start to give random "The provided API key is expired." errors, again (same reason we created the new project). Coincidence? Also, I don't like this option, especially with regards to the future (reaching 25k, going beyond and going Business Account)].

So, I'm stuck. Hence my first SO question ever. Could it be that we are blacklisted? Perhaps because of the duplicate project? Is there a way to find that out and/or to get us 'reset'? Or am I simply overlooking something?

Any help is appreciated because until we solve this, this is a deal-breaker.

Sidenote: I also filed a bug report because I think giving random errors on itself is not expected behaviour. It's up to the dev team to decide if they agree. If not, we still have a problem, hence this SO question.

Answer 1

I think you have a syntax error in your php var dump:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=AIzaSyDYuWR5wqux1_iTmfIWPveheIOr5PhqjEs&?>sensor=FALSE&language=en">
</script>

you have ?> just before sensor

Answer 2

This issue magically disappeared after a week or so.

I didn't get any response from Google, but they may have change/reset something behind the scenes, of course. The bug is still marked 'new', by the way.

My advice to others having this issue is to first check some basic things, since the individual errors I got could also result from actual things you're doing wrong (ie mistake in allowed-referers). If all seems okay after triple checking, just remove the API key from the request, test along like that for a while and retry in a couple of days.