SMX Advanced is right around the corner and the Yahoo! Search team is in on the Seattle action. If you’re heading to the Bell Harbor International Conference Center as well, be sure to check out our panels.

Tuesday, June 3rd

Time: 1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
Session: Bot Herding
Description: This session looks at some advanced techniques in herding bots and how search engines view cloaking issues today.
Yahoo!: Priyank Garg, Director, Product Management

Wednesday, June 4th

Time: 9 -10 a.m.
Session: Search Friendly Development
Description: Highlights the most important elements to consider for SEO when building a web app infrastructure and provides tactical details about how to implement those elements.
Yahoo!: Sharad Verma, Senior Manager, Product Management

Time: 12 – 1:30 p.m.
Session: Building Search-Friendly Web Applications
Description: This casual tabletop discussion is taking place during lunch at Developer Day.
Yahoo!: Paul Tarjan, Technical Yahoo!

Time: 1:45 – 3 p.m.
Session: Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know
Description: This session focuses on analytics that SEOs should be considering.
Yahoo!: Laura Lippay, Group Program Manager, Search Strategy

For more on Yahoo!’s whereabouts, head over to the YSM Blog. See you there!

Yahoo! Search Blog team

We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

To share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma
Yahoo! Search

The SearchMonkey Developer Launch Party was last night and we all had a blast. Thanks to the 300 or so people who joined us! We enjoyed demoing the SearchMonkey Developer Tool, answering questions and getting to know an enthusiastic group of developers.

The party is over but the monkeying around is just beginning. To get started building SearchMonkey apps, check out the SearchMonkey overview and then dive into the Developer Tool.

And don’t forget about our Developer Challenge for a chance to win up to $10,000 for your innovation and creativity on the SearchMonkey platform.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

It’s been three weeks since we began the limited preview of Yahoo! Search’s new open developer platform, SearchMonkey. Today, we’re officially opening up the doors to all developers — professionals and hobbyists — to begin building applications that enhance the usefulness and relevance of search results.

There are three components to this open ecosystem:

• Site owners share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction.
• Third party developers build SearchMonkey applications.
• Consumers customize their search experience.

So, what’s in it for third party developers?

With SearchMonkey, developers have a hand in shaping the next generation of search by building customized search results and mash-ups that users can add to their Yahoo! Search experience. By leveraging structured data from sites like CitySearch, StumbleUpon, eBay, or Epicurious.com, developers can add navigational links, reviews, contact information, and even locations to provide enhanced search listings.

Developers can build two types of applications using SearchMonkey: Enhanced Results and Infobars. Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a richer display. All the links in the Enhanced Results must point to the site to which the result refers. Infobars are appended below search results and can include metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (such as adding a movie to a Netflix queue).

The process for building SearchMonkey applications is very straightforward:

1) Application Type — Decide what type of app you want to build (Enhanced Result or Infobar) and enter basic info such as application name, description and icon.
2) Trigger URLs — Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app. For example, for the Enhanced Result above, the pattern would be “acmemovies.com/*”
3) Data Services — Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page markup such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction.
4) Appearance — Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.

Announcing the SearchMonkey Developer Challenge

To foster innovation and creativity on the SearchMonkey platform, we’re hosting a good old-fashioned competition. The SearchMonkey Developer Challenge will recognize innovative applications within four categories: Best Enhanced Result, Best Infobar, Most Innovative Use of Structured Data, Best Data Service, and Grand Prize (best over all categories). You have until June 14th to submit your applications for a chance to win up to $10,000.

And don’t forget to come kick things off with us this evening at the SearchMonkey Developer Launch Party. Catch live demos, meet the product team and enjoy free food, beer and, of course, schwag at Yahoo!’s Headquarters in Sunnyvale.

Whether you can join us for the party or not, keep in touch — visit our suggestion forum or drop us a comment below. We want to know how the tool is working out for you.

We look forward to evolving web search with you.

Amit Kumar
Director, Product Management
Yahoo! Search

Since many Delicious users use Internet Explorer as their primary browser, the Delicious team has announced an early beta release of the Delicious bookmarks extension for Internet Explorer. There are similarities between this version and the recently released Firefox 3 beta extension — including features such as the Delicious Sidebar and Toolbar for quick access to your bookmarks. The extension works on IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 beta for both XP and Vista. Check out the Delicious blog for more background.

To download and discuss the Internet Explorer release, head over to the delicious-ie-extension group. The team is eager to hear your feedback, so be sure to share your thoughts.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

Last year, Yahoo! Search launched Search Assist to help users find what they’re looking for quickly and easily by providing query suggestions and related concepts in real-time. Today, Yahoo! Search is embracing the Mac community and offering similar search assistance features with the acquisition of Inquisitor software, a Safari browser plug-in.

Inquisitor 3, a search technology that auto-completes queries and delivers results right in Safari Web browser, is similar to Yahoo!’s existing Search Assist technology. Simply type in your query and websites will appear immediately, as well as suggestions for refining your search. Just as with Search Assist, the goal with Inquisitor is to help users find exactly the site they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

The new version of Inquisitor removes affiliate ad links, simplifies the search provider selection interaction and refines the preferences user interface. Additionally, the new version provides quick access to Yahoo! Search however, existing users may still utilize their current default search engine or a different search engine entirely, such as a vertical alternative like Amazon or Flickr, if they prefer.

While search interface design has remained fairly utilitarian over the years, David Watanabe, founder and developer of Inquisitor, has done a fantastic job designing a simple and elegant UI. David and our team of macphiles will continue to innovate on both form and function for Inquisitor.

Mac users have been using the Inquisitor plug-in already and they seem to like it. It’s a free download, so whether you’re familiar with it or just trying it out for the first time with Yahoo! Search, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Ariel Seidman
Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Search

On Nodalities blog today, Paul Miller posts his podcast interview with Peter Mika, a SearchMonkey from Yahoo! Research. Peter’s speaking at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose May 18-22, so the two dove into what Peter will be presenting on as well as the innovation and direction behind SearchMonkey. Check out their conversation.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

Two weeks ago, we announced SearchMonkey, a new open developer platform that lets developers and site owners use semantic markup and structured data to enhance Yahoo! Search results and make them more useful, relevant and visually appealing.

We wanted to remind you that we’re kicking off this launch in true SearchMonkey style with a Developer Launch Party next Thursday, May 15. If you’re a web developer, come get the inside scoop on SearchMonkey, see live demos, deep-dive on the Developer Tool, and meet with our product managers and engineers over tasty (read: free!) food and beer.

When: May 15, 2008, 5:30 — 8:30 p.m.

Where: Yahoo! Headquarters @ URL’s Cafe, 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

RSVP: Email your full name and company name directly
to searchmonkeyevent@yahoo-inc.com. Space is limited.

For more information on the agenda and logistics, check out the event page. Be there or be a… banana.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

Today, we’re announcing the beta release of SearchScan, a new feature from Yahoo! Search that helps protect users from viruses, spyware and spam. We’ve heard from users that security and privacy continue to be major concerns when they are online. We’ve also learned that solutions that require downloads and constant updating are less than ideal. To tackle the problem, we partnered with McAfee to build a feature that provides a safer and hassle-free search experience to all users.

How does it work? SearchScan leverages McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology to alert users if risky websites appear in Yahoo! Search results. Starting today, SearchScan will be turned on by default for all users in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain, and will scan for three types of risks in our search index:

• Browser Exploits — These are sites that can stealthily harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.
• Dangerous Downloads — SearchScan will display warnings next to search results for sites that offer potentially dangerous software, such as viruses, spyware or adware. Users often may be unaware that these can be passed along with the screensavers, games and other software downloads.
• Unsolicited Email — SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited emails or inappropriately share email addresses with third parties.

With SearchScan, our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the websites they visit. By displaying prominent warnings next to search results for sites with potentially dangerous downloads or unsavory email practices, users are aware that while visiting the site may be safe, downloading a file or sharing an email address could be risky. Browser exploits, which include drive-by downloads, are different. Since just visiting these sites can cause harm, they will not appear in Yahoo! Search results if they’ve been identified by McAfee.

While SearchScan will be on by default, users have control over how they use the feature. In preferences, users can choose to turn the feature off or choose to filter out all sites with warnings from their search results.

SearchScan will continue to evolve and improve, but in the meantime, let us know if you have any feedback in the comments below.

Priyank Garg, Director, Product Management
Graham Mudd, Product Marketing Manager
Yahoo! Search