Yahoo! Search BOSS

Yahoo Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a Yahoo! Developer Network initiative to provide an open search web services platform.[1]

In 2012, Yahoo expanded their Yahoo Search BOSS platform to provide additional services such as BOSS Hosted Search to enable any website owner to embed Yahoo web search experience for free on their site.[2]

BOSS API

The main goal and idea of BOSS is to give users, in this case developers, access to the Yahoo Search index for a small fee.[3] The results can be supplied into the developer's website or program so that they can manipulate the resources according to their product's requirements. BOSS allows the results to be returned in XML, JSON, HTML, text and also allows the comprehensive search feature allowed in Yahoo like pulling the results by pages, searching inside PDF, etc. The ranking of the websites for a search term is the same as the Yahoo Search ranking since both of these are pulling from the same index and ranking.

One of BOSS's key differentiators was the free use of BOSS as a white label, no ads required service. By using Yahoo's search engine, which has had millions in R&D invested in it in the years since Yahoo boomed in the 1990s, web developers are able to get much higher quality results than if they built their own search engine. On Aug 17th, 2010 Yahoo stated that BOSS would require some sort of ad or fee-based model to sustain itself.[4]

BOSS Hosted Search

BOSS Hosted Search is a completely self serve product that enables any web site owner to embed Yahoo web search experience on their site for free. The search experience is hosted by Yahoo and provided in an iframe which can be embedded on any web site. The search experience is very similar to how search.yahoo.com experience looks like and in addition to 10 blue links includes richer modules including images, thumbnails, news results as part of the iframe itself. The product is provided for free and web site owners get a percentage of the ad revenue share if any user clicks on an search ad within the frame. Web site owners can also customize the iframe including adding their own partner logo next to the search box, removing left rail as well as removing the Yahoo search box altogether (and using their own). For implementing BOSS Hosted Search iframe, web site owners need to simply sign up at Yahoo Search BOSS Portal and copy/paste a Javascript code snippet on their site. Yahoo recently also launched reporting module to provide web site owners with more insights on how many searches were conducted through BOSS Hosted Search and the revenue which they have generated.

Usage

According to Yahoo press meeting, there are 30 million queries a day being run through BOSS powered web search pages.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Yahoo Search BOSS YDN Page
  2. ↑ Yahoo Search BOSS Portal
  3. ↑ "Yahoo Search BOSS - YDN". Developer.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2012-09-18.
  4. ↑ Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 (2010-08-17). "As Bing Takes Over Yahoo Search, SearchMonkey Dies, BOSS Is No Longer Free, But Site Explorer Still Works". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-09-18.
  5. ↑ Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 (2009-05-19). "Live From Yahoo's "End of the 10 Blue Links" Talk". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-09-18.
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