Announcing Yahoo! Search Builder
Look Ma, My Own Search Engine!
It?s always great to help a friend. A friend of mine who is a
diver wanted a specialized search engine for his website focused on diving. At
around the same time, an engineer at Yahoo! built a prototype that made
building specialized search engines a snap. Now, whether you have a blog or
website about diving, gaming, crafting, or anything in between you can create a
search engine tailored for your users.
With Yahoo!
Search Builder you can create a custom Web search engine by selecting a set
of trusted sites to search across or you can tune the search algorithm to the
topic of your choice. Beyond Web search, Search Builder includes Site search
and News search.
Then generate the code you?ll need to add your search engine
to your site. You also have control over the look and feel of the search box
and search results page. Voila! Instant search engine!
Managing your search engine
We?ve created a basic suite of tools to help you understand your search traffic. With the popular
search module, you?ll discover hot searches your users are interested in. With
user and traffic reports, you?ll be able to monitor the growth of your search
engine.
We look forward to your comments and feedback. Let us know what new features you would like us to add.
In the meantime, check out these cool search engines on diving and gaming. Try searching for “caves” on the diving search engine and you?ll find great spots for cave diving. Similarly, try “NFL” on the gaming search engine and you?ll find the new NFL game.
Lingxian Ding
Yahoo! Search
This is fantastic. Will there be a way to monetize this project through a revenue share on sponsored search links?
How is this different from Rollyo.com??
Hey
First congrats on Yahoo search builer :) This will be a little off topic forgive me :/ but the site you told us ( http://www.awadallah.com/blog ) uses ypn and adsense on same page, how is that ?
I like it, but…..
400X40 is not much of a logo. Heck it’s not even a full banner.
News about Y! Search Builder is right on target with this post:
http://www.animasblog.com/2006/08/07/search-20-goliath-kills-david-part-2/
Y! using its resources to build a tool that Rollyo has already validated in the market. And improved upon it.
Yahoo Addict:
I don’t see that at all. It looked like the ads are rotated but not in direct competition.
sounds like the Eurekster Swiki Tool. how is this different?
Feature Requests:
1) Something I’ve been wanting your major competitor to do for a while is give the option to setup your own search system to search over multiple sites.
e.g. I have a network of websites all related to the same thing.
So I want a simple search box which will search over domain1.com, domain2.com, domain3.com etc
2) Include the above feature, plus also give a small compensation to the webmaster for each search. (i.e. each search I get a small piece of the revenue action… something which your major competitor currently offers)
… How do those features sound? … I can beg! :)
Puzzled: I went through the process of creating the code for the search box telling it to search one of my domains. Then using the “Try it” box above the generated code, I tried searching for a word on my site – search came up with no results. Tried another word – same thing. It doesn’t seem to find any words on my site – why? The domain being searched is listed and it’s correct – to be absolutely sure there wasn’t a 0 instead of a o or some such thing, I copied and pasted it into a browser and sure enough it’s correct. Anyone else have such problems?
This is a great tool but what I would really like to see is a way to link this technology to my publisher account so I can earn revenue with it. Rather then just a “Yahoo Seach Box” this would be used a lot more by my visitors and could be a real nice added feature to my sites. However, until I can link this to my publisher account, each use is costing me potential lost revenue. Kind of wondering why it was not available for this use right out of the gate, the mind boggles at how this could be niche marketed.
Jack
Personally, this seems a lot like Eurekster’s Swickis just as a bunch of commenters have already mentioned.
While I think a specialized search tool has potential, I am concerned that people will filter their on-line experience to comply with their world view. The Information Super Highway should expand one’s horizons by introducing people to facts, news, and information that would otherwise evade their radar screens — not confirm one’s finite views and prejudices.
Great feature. How about an SDK to go with it?
Must say that is loooks pretty good :)
The search builder is really neat app, but I think it could really benefit by allowing users to set a delicious user/tag combination as a search limit (i.e. to limit the search over the urls defined by the links in the specified delicious feed).
I knocked up a prototype of this some time ago: deliSearch – http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/deliSearch.html
As well as letting the links identify domain limits, the individually bookmarked pages can optionally be used to create a page limited search.
tony
ps I just posted a generalisation of deliSearch – searchfeedr – which takes any feed and uses it to limit the search: http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/007309.html
We have put up a review at http://www.pandia.com/sew/256-search-builder.html
The Pandia team
I tried it and realized that I can only enter up to 25 domains into a searchengine. Do you plan to increase this limit?
Nathan, Thanks for the great feedback. We do allow one to search multiple domains with Search Builder…here are some quick steps:
*Once you have setup your initial Search Box then navigate to http://builder.search.yahoo.com/m/home
(If you are creating a new Search Builder from scratch the option to customize the search experience is provided in Step 1 Define Search Engine http://builder.search.yahoo.com/m/tune?flow=1&ei=UTF-8)
*Under the Edit heading for the Search box select the “Search Type” link
*In the “Search the Web” heading select “Customize the experience for your users” as seen in this screenshot.
http://ysearchblog.com/i/customize.jpg
*Enter the specific domains you would like to restrict your search to as seen in this screenshot.
http://ysearchblog.com/i/enter_urls.jpg
*Do not include quotes around the URL. (The supporting text in the UI has been updated to reflect this point)
*You dont even need to include the www prefix i.e. you simply can enter yahoo.com
Keep the feedback and questions coming!
The Search Builder Team
Pandia Team,
Thanks for the review of Yahoo! Search Builder. Regarding the point that Search Builder does not allow one to restrict the search to specific sites there is an issue with this that is currently being addressed. Basically, when entering the URLs that you want to restrict your search to it should not include quotes around the URL; the supporting text was a bit misleading and this issue has been addressed. Furthermore, one does not need to include the URL prefix and can simply enter yahoo.com. For a more detailed response with screen shots please see our earlier response to Nathan.
Let us know if this solved the issues you encountered.
Thanks,
The Yahoo! Search Builder Team
This is fantaastic guys! I have been waiting for a tool like this. I was going to create my own vertical search engine to replicate this, but this makes it a hell of a lot easier.
One big problem I have, is as the first poster stated. When do I get a cut of the revenue? I am pushing my users quality, filtered users to your engine. I need a cut. You get that taken care of and I behind this 100%.
This is a great application! I liked it so much in fact that I’ve posted about it on my blog.
http://itsontarget.blogspot.com/2006/08/now-entering-search-engine-wars-you.html
Do you think expand the domains limit? or 25 domains is forever?. If you are interesting in build good vertical searchers the limit is a constraint for it.
Sorry by my english, thanks
Again one simple question many have asked but no one seems to want to address, is there ever going to be a way to link this to our publisher account?
There are countless ways publisher partners could use this far better then just a plain search box.
Jack
Zawodny,
I see the same thing as Yahoo Addict. The left column on http://www.awadallah.com/blog/ are showing Google ads at the same time that Yahoo ads are being shown at the bottom of each post.
Also, I think that Yahoo Publishers should have some way to monetize Yahoo Search Builder. I think its a great tool but I have no reason to pick it against similar products mentioned above. Money always talks :)
Yahoo Team,
Is anyone going to address the question about linking Publisher functions to search builder?
There could be a lot of reasons why you can’t or don’t plan to or infact do plan to. Yet quite a few people have asked about this and while you have answered every other question posed here you have yet to even acknowledge that this question has been asked.
Don’t you think your Publisher Partners are do at least an acknowledgement?
Jim
Jim, Actually, yes! Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have some ideas/thoughts that would make for a killer integration of Search Builder with Yahoo! Publisher Network please let us know!
-Ariel
Please, please, please… Step 2 doesn’t work anymore. Error message : Error from backend: no_data. No answer from support… Somebody fixing it ? Thanks.
I’m getting the same message isidore reports above at step 2:
Error from backend: no_data
Is a fix in the works?
Thanks raising this issue… I can’t seem to reproduce it; can you provide some additional details: what values you entered to generate this error?
Thanks,
-Ariel (Yahoo! Product Management)
Any value. Whatever the choices in step 1 are, I get the “Error from backend: no_data” in the next page (example URL : http://builder.search.yahoo.com/m/searchbox?ei=UTF-8%20&mobid=U0RRtuh86@OUcAAHiulEk&flow=2)
Thanks
Seems to be working now.
I gave Yahoo Search Builder a try.. Set the search feature to search only my blog.. Got the code and put in on my blog…
I got the tool bar alright.. but the search just dosent work. I dont get results of even a single search… why..???
What the different bettwen yahoo search builder and google analitic and what happen if I add the yahoo search builder code into my site as I had registered to google analitic
This really has been an extremely useful read and I will add it to my forum. Thanks Yahoo team
What do you think of my search engine? Do you have any recommendations as to how I can improve mine?
For those who do not get search results.
Your site has to be indexed by yahoo so it can apply the imformation to the search builder.
I have a problem with “search builder” not showing up on site explorer on one of my web sites. I think this means that it hasn’t been indexed yet, but I don’t remember that happening with my other web sites. Does anyone know what the problem is?