Yahoo! Search Blog: New Y!Q Features for Publishers and Developers

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March 31, 2005

New Y!Q Features for Publishers and Developers

Since we launched Y!Q several weeks ago, we've heard a lot of questions and interesting suggestions. Since then we've revamped the Y!Q site and beefed up the Y!Q FAQ quite a bit. Many of you asked us if we could add a new feature or two. So we sifted through the requests and have implemented several of them. You can now use all of them in Y!Q deployments on your own web site.

Briefly, they are:

Default search. You can supply a "p" parameter that supplies a specific query for the initial Y!Q click in addition to the context.
Site context. It's now possible to supply additional context (a few words, a description, a sentence) behind the scenes. This context isn't readily visible to the user but may help refine results even more.
Module order customization. You have control over the order in which modules appear in the Y!Q overlay. If you'd rather have the search box at the bottom, simply provide a "source order" parameter.
Static content insertion. Y!Q has a mechanism for providing content (text or HTML) that you'd like inserted into the overlay. This could be a message to your users, a branding logo, etc. In addition, you can use CSS to style it in any way you like.

Full details are availale in the Y!Q publisher documentation.

In addition to the overlay, there's a new Y!Q DemoBar. Many of you wanted to customize the appearance of the Demobar. The updated version now has a "mini-mode" that is very space efficient and is fully customizable, but still allows you to quickly capture text and Y!Q it.

Finally, if you're intrigued by the idea of adding contextual search to an application, check our the Contextual Search API available on YSDN.

Volunteers Needed

We have some interesting new features availabe for the next Y!Q release. If you're the adventurous type and would like to help test them on your web site, please leave a comment with your e-mail address or send me email.

Jeremy Zawodny
Yahoo! Search

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Comments

I wouldn't mind testing out new features.

Posted by: Jason | March 31, 2005 12:54 PM

I'm a volunteer ! :D

Posted by: Persian Buddy | March 31, 2005 02:31 PM

interested to test Y!Q Features
thanks pascal

Posted by: pascal rossini | March 31, 2005 06:16 PM

I would like to Volunteer!

Posted by: Toronto Student | March 31, 2005 06:21 PM

I'd like to volunteer.

Also, is there any way to style the Y!Q feature? I tried it once in my blog, but it messed up the page. I think I narrowed it down to the width of the thing.

Posted by: Greg | March 31, 2005 06:44 PM

I would like to volunteer

Posted by: Venky Krishnamoorthy | March 31, 2005 06:58 PM

Jeremy, I've been wanting for awhile to do some big things with Y!Q to better integrate my site. I'd more than love a chance to test out its functionality.

Posted by: Nathan Weinberg | March 31, 2005 08:27 PM

count me in!

Posted by: blewtooth | April 1, 2005 05:13 AM

I would like to volunteer as well!

Posted by: Boooboo | April 1, 2005 08:58 PM

I would like to volunteer please!

Posted by: Allen | April 2, 2005 03:01 PM

I would like to volunteer please!

Posted by: iworkforthem | April 3, 2005 09:58 AM

I would like to volunteer as well and aide with the new features of Y!Q

Posted by: Kashif Khan | April 3, 2005 12:18 PM

Same here :) Email sent!