Yahoo! Search BOSS V2 were launched in April, and thanks to the users, the service has been blowing past our expectations. Back then, we promised that there was a lot more to come. Today we would like to announce a few updates to the service.
Control your daily usage limits
Many BOSS developers told us they wanted to be able to control their daily usage. Starting next wek, developers can specify a daily dollar limit for your service consumption. Of course, you can change that limit at any time and can make any combination of queries before hitting that limit. Learn more here on how to set this up. You truly control your own service.
HTTPS support for even more security
Even though we are the only Search API using oAuth, we decided to go one step further. We now allow you to use all the goodness of BOSS with HTTPS. You get all the same functionality that you have with BOSS V2 but you can affix a HTTPS to ensure additional peace of mind. Your search with even more security.
BOSS + SQL, BOSS + YQL
We know that a number of BOSS developers are more familiar with SQL and YQL. We have hence upgraded our BOSS mashup to work with V2, which allows for SQL type querying for the service. As shown in this example about 15 lines of code, you can put together a complete News module. You can also use a user created YQL table with BOSS V2. Download sample mashup code or start using YQL. Your search made relational.
More BOSS news
We added more functionality to the BOSS news service. You can now search for specific headlines, news from a specific location and by specific language. All this powered by the great news content that is indexed by Yahoo! News. Your news, with even more control.
Upgrades in the documentation
We have the best user community in the Search world and we listened to you. In addition to previous examples in PHP, we added code examples in Perl, Python, Ruby, Java and C# to make your jump to BOSS as painless as possible. We noticed the common pitfalls users faced and made sure to provide useful pointers where needed. Check out the documentation and start running with BOSS. Your documents, written your way.
What’s next?
We are truly only scratching the surface of what Y! Search BOSS can offer you. We’re working on delivering a new feature related to blog search. Stay in touch, we’ll share more details in posts to come.
Also as we had announced back in April, we are shutting down BOSS v1 on July 20, 2011, so make sure you transition your applications. If you have any questions reach out to us on the BOSS Yahoo! Group – we are always waiting to help.
New Yahoo Clues Launches
Have you ever wondered how powerful it would be to instantly discover what’s popular to a select group of searchers – by age or gender – over the past day, week or even over the past year?
What if you had controls at your fingertips that let you slice and dice Yahoo! searchers by criteria such as gender, age group and regional interest, or gain deep insights from comparing search terms?
Welcome to the new Yahoo! Clues. This free service gives you fun and engaging ways to explore what users are searching for on Yahoo!, offering a “behind the scenes” look into popular search trends.
Top Trends, a key new feature, allows endless exploration of the most popular search terms on Yahoo! Search. Using filter selections, you can choose a combination of time range, gender, age group and geographic location, and even search term category – and Top Trends shows you what’s popular.
Other enhancements to Yahoo! Clues, first introduced back in November 2010, include:
New site design – Clues now includes a home page with navigation to the Top Trends and Trend Analysis features.
More data – We have expanded the history from one month to over 12 months, and covering over three times as many search terms as the previous release.
Global coverage – All English-language searches globally are available.
New map – Trend Analysis includes a brand new map that puts the data at the center of the experience with beautiful heat map visualizations.
Yahoo! Clues is one of the key tools behind the popular Yahoo! search trends stories on our blog, such as last week’s post on the Fourth of July searches, this year’s American Idol projections, Oprah’s Effect on web searches, or even search trends after major news events such as the Death of Bin Laden or the Japan earthquake.
As I ??discussed with Vera H-C Chan during SXSW Interactive earlier this year, analyzing search trends helps us understand the impulses and processes of why people make their choices at that particular moment in time. Furthermore, the massive global scale of Yahoo! Search activity provides a unique ability to instantly poll a huge sample size of our users to spot future trends or dig into what’s popular.
The questions are endless…
For more details on what’s new for Yahoo! Clues, visit the Clues help page, and to start exploring now, go check out the new Yahoo! Clues.
What if you had controls at your fingertips that let you slice and dice Yahoo! searchers by criteria such as gender, age group and regional interest, or gain deep insights from comparing search terms?
Welcome to the new Yahoo! Clues. This free service gives you fun and engaging ways to explore what users are searching for on Yahoo!, offering a “behind the scenes” look into popular search trends.
Top Trends, a key new feature, allows endless exploration of the most popular search terms on Yahoo! Search. Using filter selections, you can choose a combination of time range, gender, age group and geographic location, and even search term category – and Top Trends shows you what’s popular.
Other enhancements to Yahoo! Clues, first introduced back in November 2010, include:
New site design – Clues now includes a home page with navigation to the Top Trends and Trend Analysis features.
More data – We have expanded the history from one month to over 12 months, and covering over three times as many search terms as the previous release.
Global coverage – All English-language searches globally are available.
New map – Trend Analysis includes a brand new map that puts the data at the center of the experience with beautiful heat map visualizations.
Yahoo! Clues is one of the key tools behind the popular Yahoo! search trends stories on our blog, such as last week’s post on the Fourth of July searches, this year’s American Idol projections, Oprah’s Effect on web searches, or even search trends after major news events such as the Death of Bin Laden or the Japan earthquake.
As I ??discussed with Vera H-C Chan during SXSW Interactive earlier this year, analyzing search trends helps us understand the impulses and processes of why people make their choices at that particular moment in time. Furthermore, the massive global scale of Yahoo! Search activity provides a unique ability to instantly poll a huge sample size of our users to spot future trends or dig into what’s popular.
The questions are endless…
For more details on what’s new for Yahoo! Clues, visit the Clues help page, and to start exploring now, go check out the new Yahoo! Clues.
YDN QA with DuckDuckGo a search engine built with BOSS
Rahul Hampole, Senior Product Manager for Yahoo! Search BOSS, recently interviewed DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg by email for the Yahoo! Developer Network’s blog. One of the Q&A’s include:
How does Yahoo! Search BOSS appeal to a developer like you (both on the product side and the business side)?
On the product side, it enables a developer to deliver a fully functioning general-purpose search engine to a consumer, which is pretty amazing if you think about it. As such, it really opens up the possibility to innovate in search.
On the business side, the pricing structure enables you to find a profitable niche. Third-party advertising is allowed, and you can also use the Yahoo! Search ads, which should cover costs.
For more of the Q&A, check out the YDN blog interview.
How does Yahoo! Search BOSS appeal to a developer like you (both on the product side and the business side)?
On the product side, it enables a developer to deliver a fully functioning general-purpose search engine to a consumer, which is pretty amazing if you think about it. As such, it really opens up the possibility to innovate in search.
On the business side, the pricing structure enables you to find a profitable niche. Third-party advertising is allowed, and you can also use the Yahoo! Search ads, which should cover costs.
For more of the Q&A, check out the YDN blog interview.
Introducing schemaorg A Collaboration on Structured Data
Today we’re announcing schema.org, a new initiative from Yahoo!, Bing, and Google, to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, webmasters and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in search results on Bing, Google, and Yahoo!. Information and tips are available on schema.org, a one-stop resource for webmasters looking to add markup to make their pages better understood by search engines.
In 2008, Yahoo! showed its support of structured data through the launch of the SearchMonkey program. We won plaudits and awards for our work but most importantly Yahoo! helped boost an increase in markup on the web which in turn helped improve the search experience by resolving questions quickly through enhanced result displays. SearchMonkey also helped Yahoo! kick start various initiatives to provide a better search experience, including automatic rich results and richer object displays on Yahoo! Search.
We continue our support of the open web and in an effort to delight our users with richer and more useful user experiences we’ve come together with Bing and Google to pool our experiences and to support a common set of schemas, just as search engines came together to support sitemaps.
Today’s announcement offers tremendous opportunity for growth. In addition to consolidating the schemas for the vocabularies we already support, there are schemas for more than a hundred newly created categories including movies, music, organizations, TV shows, products, places and more. We will continue to expand these categories by listening to feedback from the community and will continue publishing new schemas on a regular basis. Don’t worry if your site has already added RDFa or microformats currently supported by our Enhanced Displays program, that site will still appear with an Enhanced Display on Yahoo! – no changes required.
As webmasters add this markup to their sites, search engines can develop richer search experiences. Yahoo! is leading the way in this space and recently announced alignment between search and our Web of Objects program to deliver engaging answers through Search Direct. We look forward to seeing structured markup continue to grow on the web, power richer search results, and enable you to find answers faster to even more complex queries.
In 2008, Yahoo! showed its support of structured data through the launch of the SearchMonkey program. We won plaudits and awards for our work but most importantly Yahoo! helped boost an increase in markup on the web which in turn helped improve the search experience by resolving questions quickly through enhanced result displays. SearchMonkey also helped Yahoo! kick start various initiatives to provide a better search experience, including automatic rich results and richer object displays on Yahoo! Search.
We continue our support of the open web and in an effort to delight our users with richer and more useful user experiences we’ve come together with Bing and Google to pool our experiences and to support a common set of schemas, just as search engines came together to support sitemaps.
Today’s announcement offers tremendous opportunity for growth. In addition to consolidating the schemas for the vocabularies we already support, there are schemas for more than a hundred newly created categories including movies, music, organizations, TV shows, products, places and more. We will continue to expand these categories by listening to feedback from the community and will continue publishing new schemas on a regular basis. Don’t worry if your site has already added RDFa or microformats currently supported by our Enhanced Displays program, that site will still appear with an Enhanced Display on Yahoo! – no changes required.
As webmasters add this markup to their sites, search engines can develop richer search experiences. Yahoo! is leading the way in this space and recently announced alignment between search and our Web of Objects program to deliver engaging answers through Search Direct. We look forward to seeing structured markup continue to grow on the web, power richer search results, and enable you to find answers faster to even more complex queries.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)