BOSS — The Next Step in our Open Search Ecosystem
Today, Yahoo! Search is taking another step in extending the Yahoo! Open Strategy with the launch of Yahoo! Search BOSS, a web services platform that allows developers and companies to create and launch web-scale search products by utilizing the same infrastructure and technology that powers Yahoo! Search.
Our goal with BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is simple — foster innovation in the search landscape. As anyone who follows the search industry knows, the barriers to successfully building a high quality, web-scale search engine are incredibly high. Doing so requires hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in engineering, sciences and core infrastructure — from crawling and indexing technology to relevancy and machine learning algorithms, to stuff as mundane as data centers, servers and power. Because competing successfully in web search requires an investment of this scale, new players have effectively been prohibited from delivering credible alternatives to Yahoo! and Google. We believe the BOSS platform will begin to change that.
So what is BOSS?
BOSS is a new, open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo! Search index via an API. BOSS allows developers to take advantage of Yahoo!’s production search infrastructure and technology, combine that with their own unique assets, and create their own search experiences. While search APIs have been available for some time, BOSS removes many of the usage restrictions that have prevented other companies from using them to build innovative new search engines.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s available today:
- Ability to re-rank and blend results — BOSS partners can re-rank search results as they see fit and blend Yahoo!’s results with proprietary and other web content in a single search experience
- Total flexibility on presentation — Freedom to present search results using any user interface paradigm, without Yahoo! branding or attribution requirements
- BOSS Mashup Framework — We’re releasing a Python library and UI templates that allow developers to easily mashup BOSS search results with other public data sources
- Web, news and image search — At launch, developers will have access to web, news and image search and we’ll be adding more verticals soon
- Unlimited queries — There are no rate limits on the number of queries per day
These capabilities are really just a first step — we’re already working on expanding the API functionality and providing more access to Yahoo! Search Technology.
In addition to a self-serve API, we’re also partnering with a handful of Internet companies with large user bases or unique assets to collaboratively develop next gen search products using Yahoo!’s full suite of search technology. To learn more about BOSS Custom, click here.
What’s in it for Yahoo! and partners?
Why would Yahoo! open up its search infrastructure and technology to developers, entrepreneurs and companies who could use it to compete with us? It’s really quite simple. First, we believe that being open is core to Yahoo!’s future success — opening our network, opening our own search experience via SearchMonkey, and now opening our search infrastructure via BOSS — will lead to innovation both on Yahoo! and powered by Yahoo!. For BOSS, we see a virtuous circle in which partners deliver innovative search experiences, and as they grow their audiences and usage we have more data that can be used to improve our own Yahoo! Search experience and as a result, improve the quality of results our BOSS partners and their users get. Second, we do see new revenue streams from BOSS. In the coming months, we’ll be launching a monetization platform for BOSS that will enable Yahoo! to expand its ad network and enable BOSS partners to jointly participate in the compelling economics of search.
What’s in it for users?
More choice. BOSS will enable a range of fundamentally different search experiences. These new search products will provide value to users along multiple dimensions, such as vertical specialization, new relevance indicators and ranking models, and innovative UI implementations. Our hope is that the resulting expansion in user choice will have the effect of fragmenting the increasingly consolidated search market in much the same way that cable TV dramatically increased programming choices for television viewers.
Kick the tires and get started
Want to kick the tires on what BOSS-powered search could look like? As part of an alpha program, we’ve been working with a handful of start-ups and developers who have already begun using BOSS. Here are a few early examples of what’s possible with BOSS:
- Me.dium, a start-up that’s built an innovative collaborative browsing product used BOSS to build a web-scale search engine that leverages its real-time surfing data. By combining the depth of the Yahoo! Search index with its insight into where users are browsing, Me.dium can provide its users with a unique buzz-based search experience.
- Hakia, a semantic search start-up, is using BOSS to access the Yahoo! Search index and dramatically increase the speed with which it can semantically analyze the web. With BOSS providing this important infrastructure, Hakia is able to deliver a language search experience that isn’t available from any of the “big three” search providers or other semantic search engines.
- Daylife To-Go is a new self-service, hosted publishing platform from Daylife. Anyone can use this platform to generate customizable pages and widgets. Daylife To-Go uses the BOSS API platform to power its web search module.
- Cluuz, a next-generation search engine prototype, generates easier-to-understand search results through semantic cluster graphs, image extraction and tag clouds. The Cluuz analysis is performed in real-time on results returned from the BOSS API.
To learn more about BOSS and get started using the API, visit the Yahoo! Developer Network. BOSS is open to all — so check out the documentation, get a BOSS app ID and start building the next generation of search.
The BOSS Team
Are there any plans to provide an API for yahoo local search data?
Nice, but inadequate to make a serious dent in market share. I think you should open up the crawler indices +some select signals, not just the results: http://friendfeed.com/e/d7a6da66-39be-8239-2d79-aef037cf1714/Hitwise-Yahoo-Would-be-Just-Fine-Without/
Well, if one could actually find backers to provide cost relief that offsets implementation, development and marketing expense for a new site using the API in this economy, maybe I’ve found a good use for my site name.
Even so, it does seem like a nice enhancement for established search sites to implement.
Any word if there are plans to impose usage fees or access limits over time? Is there a section to cover Terms and Conditions of use for the service?
Also, is there a feedback loop in place for any API enhancements or extensions?
It would be really interesting to create a search mashup of Yahoo/Google/Live using all 3 available API’s.
But how to use that really its a interesting application, can i use in our site?
It would be nice to know more about “BOSS partners can re-rank search results”
Excellent move Yahoo. This is by far the best example I’ve seen of Yahoo as a company making the turnaround that your investors have been looking for. This is a huge value proposition for your shareholders, and I think Yahoo may be able to right the ship in the end. Thanks!
http://www.smbtechadvice.com
How about ipv6-only site support? I’d like to start spidering ipv6-only websites, and be able to access the search via ipv6 (as I can with ipv6.google.com, although I won’t get ipv6-only site results).
How many web pages BOSS has indexed?
No wonder everyone’s trying to cut deals and/or buy you out.
Interesting. I like it.
Indeed a great step to open your technology tool box.
Definitely the most interesting development on search engine work done by yahoo for a while.
Definitely an interesting development and good decision by Yahoo. I can see how a lot of creative & innovative search applications can be built on top of Yahoo Search Infrastructure, utilizing this platform. Thanks.
Ghazali Ridzwan
ANTARAMEDIA | explore the possibilities
http://www.antaramedia.com
will BOSS users developers earn $$ off of sponsored link results?
how is this different than prodege.com?
I very much like the idea that the actual surfers can enter what they think are the relevant although this is open to abuse by black hat seo guys who will just keep clicking their sites.
I’ve been playing with this for a bit and … two easy suggestions and one harder suggestion:
Easy:
(1) Please make the url and page title parametrizable as well (the way the domain is, using the site: operator). You have this in advanced search already, it’s just a question of exposing it (http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8)
(2) Please allow for longer “abstracts”– the ones being returned right now are kind of short.
Harder:
(1) Is there any way you could expose the Yahoo cache, so that we could generate our own summaries?
Bill
BOSS sounds pretty sweet. It will be interesting to see how things move forward now that Ihman or whatever is name is has joined the board. It seems like he is always wanting to take yahoo in his own direction.
well, easy enough to understand and simple enough to program to with a few minutes coding. I have an implementation on a test site, hope to make it live in a few minutes.
Good job yahoo!
Sounds interesting, is there somewhere I can get more details on this?
Are there any plans to provide an API for yahoo local search data?
Good job YAHOO!
Sounds interesting, is there somewhere I can get more details on this?
the actual surfers can enter what they think are the relevant although this is open to abuse by black hat seo guys who will just keep clicking their sites.
Great tool, just started to play with this and going to implement it. Great job Yahoo!
BOSS sounds like it is a very interesting development to provide proprietary and other web content in a single search experience. Good.
This is a very good update indeed
The results are far better than previously
Congrats Yahoo! Good job!
Excellent work Yahoo. I like the new feature - keep making us great stuff like this!
Great job Yahoo. I want to see you develop the tool further, that would be great!
good great job Yahoo..
Great tool, just started to play with this and going to implement it. Great job Yahoo!
we all know that yahoo is great and now one more great work
Sounds interesting, is there somewhere I can get more details on this?
It would be nice to know more about “BOSS partners can re-rank search results”
What is about BOSS partners can re-rank search results ?