Yahoo Opens Search Platform to Developers, Launches SearchMonkey Initiative

[mandy]

Yahoo yesterday formally opened its search platform to the developer community, inviting site owners and third-party programmers to begin creating applications that will enhance the content that appears in a search listing.

Through the SearchMonkey initiative, Yahoo plans to tap into the vast stores of structured data within the Web pages its search engine indexes to deliver results that provide much more information about sites' content than the traditional list of blue links with text snippets underneath.

The announcement comes on the same day that Yahoo's future is once again called into question. Earlier today, activist investor Carl Icahn confirmed his intention to replace Yahoo's board of directors in an effort to consummate the sale of the company to Microsoft...

full article: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news...hp/3747476

more:

Creating An Enhanced Listing With Yahoo!'s SearchMonkey Application Development Platform

SearchMonkey allows publishers to develop a custom layout for their pages' search result listings — instead of just a title hyperlinked to your page along with some description text snippet, you could include other components, such as a small picture icon, related links, rating stars, and brief lists of specific info about the page's subject matter. Note that your users have to add your custom layout to see this in their search results.

As I took a look at the application development interfaces, I was pleased to see how Yahoo! had set the whole thing up. There are two main parts of the platform:

    * Data Services through which you can use either the elements that Yahoo! already collects from your webpages or set up your own custom data services to provide the application with structured data.
    * Presentation Applications which allow you to take the data, format it, and deliver it up through the listing area.

full article: http://searchengineland.com/080516-151916.php

[mandy]

A related article:

Yahoo continues to make semantic waves. It has reported on its search blog that the results of three SearchMonkey applications — Yelp, Yahoo!Local, and LinkedIn Enhanced — now will appear automatically in search results. These three applications were among the first to share structured data, one of the requirements for making an application a default choice at Yahoo Search.

Yelp, developed by a Yahoo user, provides useful information about local businesses, including previews of photos, reviews, ratings, addresses, and phone numbers while you search. Yahoo! Local is a comprehensive business directory, and within Yahoo! Search you can view LinkedIn public profiles in a richer format if the LinkedIn members have claimed a custom public profile URL.

The number of SearchMonkey applications on the Yahoo! Search Gallery totals 56 at this point, and Yahoo is promising to turn more on as default applications...

full article: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news...hp/3765631