An Open Approach to Search
If you didn’t realize it, Yahoo! is embracing openness like never before:
The open theme continues today as we are announcing that we are opening up Yahoo! Search itself. That’s right — you heard it correctly — the Yahoo! Search experience will soon be open. This open search platform enables 3rd parties to build and present the next generation of search results. There are a number of layers and capabilities that we have built into the platform, but our intent is clear — present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from “to do” to “done.”
Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners — big or small — an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites — ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.
For example, by sharing its database of restaurant reviews, location information and photos with Yahoo!, Yelp can develop a far more visually compelling and useful search result than was previously presented to users. Here is how it works: website owners like Yelp, WebMD, The New York Times, and anyone else can supply us with their data and our patented Machined Learned Ranking helps ensure these results are presented to users at the right time. Users benefit because their search results will have more useful information than they did before from websites they trust. And websites benefit through increased and higher quality traffic from Yahoo! Search. Here is an example of what it will look like:
Before
After
We believe that combining a free, open platform with structured, semantic content from across the Web is a clear win for all parties involved — site owners, Yahoo! and most importantly, our users. And by the way, users will be in complete control of the experience and will be able to turn off anything related to open search if they so desire. Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be talking more about how this platform will work and what it will enable.
If you’re interested in learning more about our open search platform, you can do so live and in person tomorrow (Tue, 2/26) if you’re coming to SMX West. Amit Kumar, the product lead for the open search platform, will be discussing it at a special lunch talk (Session time: 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.; Location: Santa Clara Convention Center, Great America J). If you can’t make it but want to be kept in the loop, please share your information with us here.
We want to know what you think, so keep your comments coming. And stay tuned for more on this and a few other things we’ve got in the pipeline.
Vish Makhijani
SVP & GM, Yahoo! Search
another really interesting product from Y!.
Having said that, please throw some serious marketing behind this. Y! does a very sloppy job of letting users know the cool things it does and your competitor in the mean time gets truck loads of free press from not-so-knowledgeable individuals.
This sounds like a great step forward but what safety features are there to stop someone spamming the hell out of this?
From the sounds of things it will be very easy to ‘deep link’ to spammy pages or even fake the rating of your site.
I’m not attending SMX and am seriously kicking myself now
Nice step.. But it think it can be exploited and abused beyond extent.
“Yelp, WebMD, The New York Times, and “”anyone else”"”
It even antialiases the fonts to make it look better ;-)
Anyway, it’s much better looking but i’m afraid it’s an open gap for spammers too. If well used, it could be a real improvement
I think it is a great move from you guys. It means that you are still thinking ahead and I like that.
But doing that kind of more visual presentation, aren’t you hurting your own advertising programs a bit ? if someone whose website shows up in your first page of results, and has got great reviews, a nice pic, and some good explanations, might not jump into your advertising program, does it ?
Great! What about smaller sites? Is this going to be extended to small business sites.
It will need grassroots organization with the webmaster community to make it work. Not many Search technologies get me excited but this one just has all the right dynamics to be a game changer.
Blogged about it as well here: http://www.conceptualist.com/my-readings/2008/02/26
Cheers
Sahar Sarid
Why should I do all this extra work to make your search engine better? A large enough portion of my day already goes to dealing with the differences between all you guys.
Every other SE out there is working on doing this kind of thing automatically. Interesting idea, but I’ll pass.
Open Search will enable people to influence the quality of search results. That’s ok if the person or company is honest. But it’s bad news if someone just follows his own agenda. As most people do ;)
When can we expect you to “open” the docs on what we need to do and how we need to do this (for those of us that aren’t going to SMX)? :-)
It is going to use microformats for the reviews, etc?
I was just contacted by a company last week that is responsible for the infrastructure of local search results. For a $35 fee, they can consolidate your information that gets displayed by default in the data portion of the one box for local search. It will definitely be interesting to see this aspect of search evolve. It’s like a paid listing with perks since positioning is all most care about (the it’s on top so it must be great mentality). I just hope it is moderated to prevent companies from abusing it with sp@m…
Sounds very cool. Glad Yahoo is flexing their Open muscles.
However, knowing how this can spiral out of control with regard to spam and malicious software, what steps is Yahoo taking to prevent less than moral users from abusing the service?
And if that can’t really be disclosed, how can publishers or users report potentially harmful results for further review?
Aside from those concerns, looks like a good idea. Keep it up!
~Joe
Is this actually based on the OpenSearch protocol? If not you should probably clarify that fact because I’ve already seen several comments on various blogs that seem to be assuming SearchMonkey is based on OpenSearch even though the announcement abouve seems to have little to do with OpenSearch concepts.
This right here is the future of search engine results! We noticed when searching on Yahoo! recently that a lot of results came up additionally with info from Delicious (which we know you own). We see you are AB testing this stuff and we think it’s great. Although it will change the dynamics of SEO as a whole, overall it could prove to be a better option for searchers everywhere!
Are you guys trying to be funny by calling this “Open Search” when it in fact has nothing to do with OpenSearch?
Give us a break. Come up with your own name, please.
Isn’t this what microformats are for?
I hope there are clear guidelines and limits for including relevant information and not meaningless information. I want the search engine to decide what to use on the result page: it’s what makes one search engine better than another…
I hope this is achieved using microformats! Definitely a step in the right direction either way… ‘Social Search’ is the future of Search!
I think it is great. This will at least change the current information overloading on search engine results. In terms of SEO, this will have a positive influence on user experience. I mean making SEO more user-friendly.
ProactiveSEO
SEO & PPC for SMEs
On the surface, this looks like a great idea from the search user/experience perspective. But if there’s no need to actually visit a site to access the content you’re looking for, then that site loses visitors, and possibly ad revenue. And with so many sites relying on ad revenue to stay in business, they may actually impact their own success by implementing Open Search.
This feature may have more potential for lining Yahoo’s pockets from increased page views and time on search pages in the short-term than benefiting the search experience or content publishers in the long-term.
Great move on Yahoo’s part. I always thought that Google’s move to close their search and using strictly Javascript hurt the potential for new applications to be built upon their infrastructure. My personal belief for a key to Yahoo’s future of success is to utilize their deep connections and open up themselves as a data platform for sites to build new applications. Currently, I feel that search has been rather limited and despite having improved since the beginning, it still requires a lot of work by people to filter through irrelevant results. Hopefully, this move will allow people to build new applications like better filters to cancel out a lot of the noise on the internet and give people truly relevant search results. thanks!
This sounds great. I’m curious to see how far Yahoo takes it. Will it start providing images for all product related searches?
Open Search is the way to go………..keep up the great work
Very interesting approach to personalize search ..
Nice Idea, but it still requires a lot of work by people to filter through irrelevant results.
Hi all,
I’ve seen a number of really good questions in the comments above, so I thought I’d take a crack and answering some of the more popular ones. Let us know if you have any other comments or questions!
Thanks,
Amit Kumar
Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search
Spam fighting
How will Yahoo! Search ensure the open search platform isn’t used a spamming tool?
The enhanced results enabled by the open search platform come in two primary flavors — those that will be on by default for all users and those that require the user to proactively add them to their experience. Spam won’t be an issue for the default results (we’ll make sure of it!) and we’ll be putting a number of policies in place to ensure the user-added results are high quality (including community enforcement, etc).
Impact on advertising
How will the open search platform affect Yahoo!’s search advertising program?
The impact the open search platform on our sponsored results is something we’ll be monitoring closely. We believe that a richer, more useful search experience will create a more loyal and engaged user base. The resulting increase in Yahoo! Search usage will hopefully translate to an even stronger advertising program!
Can smaller sites participate?
Can smaller sites participate or is this open only to large sites?
Any site owner — big or small — can participate in the open search platform. In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing more information about exactly how the program works, but rest assured, it’s open to all.
Timing
When will there be more details and documentation about how to participate in the open search platform?
We’ll be sharing more about how the open search platform works and what it enables in the coming weeks. If you want to stay in the loop, share your contact info with us here: http://tools.search.yahoo.com/open
Microformats
Will the open search platform use microformats, such as for the reviews, etc?
Yahoo! has always been committed to open standards. We’re certainly paying close attention to the adoption of microformats. We’ll have more to share regarding supported formats soon — sign up here if you’d like to stay in the loop: http://tools.search.yahoo.com/open
There is a lot of details to work out, but if they get it right, this could be quite revolutionary. I own a search on a large site that includes eCommerce section. We use microformats for the site search and I see it as a major competitive advantage over using external search engines to search the site. If external SE’s give you higher level of control over presentation of your content/products then the need for individual site searches decreases and the line between Internet and Enterprise search becomes fuzzier.
Isn’t this what microformats are for?
Very interesting approach to personalize search ..
This is a nice feature we have been waiting for!
On the surface, this looks like a great idea from the search user/experience perspective. But if there’s no need to actually visit a site to access the content you’re looking for, then that site loses visitors, and possibly ad revenue. And with so many sites relying on ad revenue to stay in business, they may actually impact their own success by implementing Open Search.
This feature may have more potential for lining Yahoo’s pockets from increased page views and time on search pages in the short-term than benefiting the search experience or content publishers in the long-term.
Great! What about smaller sites? Is this going to be extended to small business sites.
Hi Vish. Great post. Appreciate the heads up on this exciting development.
Have you thought about a way to link the search results to a nested search such as Yahoo! Shortcuts? (I use this tool in my Wordpress blogs.) This nesting capacity would be a great tool to drill down through results to get to the page you wanted faster.
I like the example shown in your original post, but most of my search activity is for information not on-line commerce. A nested search tool would be more effective for my typical usage.
Really interesting development - first thing I’ve seen out of Yahoo! search in a while that would be compelling for me as a user.
Does anyone know if this is purely a change in what gets displayed - or does it also impact what gets indexed? Specific example - if I use a Yelp plugin, will that just change the way a Yelp result looks in the search results page, or will it actually change the order in which search results are returned?
This is certainly the next evolutionary steps in searches.
The era of pure text is over and we need to move forward with feature rich, crisp, and informative information to be displayed in results.
I’m yet to analyze its impact w.r.t Organic SEO. If anyone has already done it then could you like to share it here please?
I can clearly see how enabling Website owners to have some greater input on their listings will ultimately enhance the user experience. It will also be nice to get some rich content into otherwise bland search results. Good work!
Amit -
Thanks for coming on here to answer some concerns. However, I noticed that you avoided the concern expressed by myself, Steve, and DeWitt Clinton (the creator of the OpenSearch protocol).
That is… why are you trying to infringe upon the OpenSearch trademark and benefit from the established name of that protocol, calling your service by a nearly identical name, and yet not implementing anything related to the actual OpenSearch specification?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I hope these changes have a positive impact on the site’s search usage.
Well said. Another great move by yahoo in contributing to the search engine world. I’m unable to attend the meet in person. Do they release any api or sdk for implementing the data in to their web services? I hope so. I can hear such api or sdk available soon from yahoo.
I agree. I hope that as yahoo continues to improve i hope they keep in mind the little guy, the small business man.
Great! What about smaller sites? Is this going to be extended to small business sites. thank youu
Good to see Yahoo is taking notice of the smaller players.
Looks like a step in the right direction. I like the personalisation features to the search results, should provide very relevant/rich results for users. But what about either incompetent users and spammers? What kind of moderation and filtering will you use to keep the quality high?
I was just contacted by a company last week that is responsible for the infrastructure of local search results.
Really interesting development - first thing I’ve seen out of Yahoo! search in a while that would be compelling for me as a user.
Great! What about smaller sites? Is this going to be extended to small business sites.
http://smsmp3video.blogspot.com/
the after is better, does it slow the search time?
The new format is great photo’s add a new dimension to the searches.
Excellent. Hope this development will have a positive effect on the search usage of site. Go on…….
Now thats the thing i was looking for. Great going YAHOO!
I really like it and I think its a big step towards changing the already boring traditional search results format.
Okay, we’re all looking forward to see how this works - and how useful this is for the end user.
This is a great way for customers to represent companies and products in search results. Also a big step forward for Web 2.0.
Peter Suttner
Dreamland GmbH & Co. KG
Experts in Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing
Germany
Just going to try it out for my website. This is really AWESOME and increase the serp value much more
The visual aspect of the search is really good Yahoo needs to keep coming up with these great new innovations.
Yahoo is coming up and according to Clifton Lambreth’s new book - Ford and the American Dream, Clifton says Yahoo is moving up on all the rankings!
I agree completely - interestingly enough they are becoming alike appearance wise.
Dataflurry - http://www.dataflurry.com - phoenix website design, arizona search optimization
Is this going to be extended to small business sites.
Good to see Yahoo is taking notice of the smaller players.
Great! What about smaller sites? Is this going to be extended to small business sites.