At the page level, you can now see your SearchMonkey object statistics. This means that if you’ve marked up your pages or provided us a feed that matches one of our existing SearchMonkey templates, your page will display all of the SearchMonkey objects we’ve indexed on that page.

We’ve also included Yahoo! Search keyterms and Delicious bookmark information for this page. Site Explorer gives you a great way to explore all sorts of metadata about your pages, whether it comes from SearchMonkey, Delicious, or our term extraction code.

We now also provide a site-level dashboard that displays additional information, including the number of SearchMonkey feeds you submitted and a history of any custom actions you have requested for your site (such as defining URL query parameters that you want us to ignore).

Finally, we’ve improved some of our backend logic for SearchMonkey feeds so that you can validate small test feeds much faster than before. This enables site owners to iteratively develop their SearchMonkey feeds without having to wait for the batch process to return.

Please try out these new features and let us know what you think!

Yahoo! Site Explorer Team

We’ve just announced an all-new Yahoo! Search experience, with many new features powered by SearchMonkey data.  Since launching our open developer platform in May 2008, Yahoo! Search has enabled thousands of developers to shape the search experience for millions of Yahoo! users. If you are interested in building semantic applications similar to what we’ve come up with at Yahoo! Search, here are some details to get you started.

What structured objects are available?

All of the objects listed on the SearchMonkey homepage are available to you. With the new feature “object refiners,” users can now restrict the search results to specific object types. Site owners contribute data of these objects by marking up their pages with RDF or microformats, or by providing dataRSS feeds. If you’re interested in the actual data of these objects, use the Yahoo! Search BOSS API to request the SearchMonkey data as part of the search request.

How can I access these structured objects?

The SearchMonkey team has been encouraging developers to use our structured data to build semantic Web applications ever since we partnered with BOSS.  Using the BOSS API, you can access SearchMonkey structured objects.

To restrict the result set to pages with SearchMonkey objects, just add “searchmonkey:<objectType>” to your query. The result set from BOSS will only contain URLs that have objects of that type.

For example, the following query returns all of the documents in the Yahoo! Web index that has the words “Sunnyvale” and “pizza” – about 3 million pages.

http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/sunnyvale+pizza?appid=wX7OZ3zV34Fy2Y4W4in_vsjFmRhruQNgCxdxn6RUke2c2JVDZdw6bfc1rcEjVnw-&format=xml

But if you only want pages with local business objects on them, you can add “searchmonkey:local” to the query:

http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/sunnyvale+pizza+searchmonkey:local?appid=wX7OZ3zV34Fy2Y4W4in_vsjFmRhruQNgCxdxn6RUke2c2JVDZdw6bfc1rcEjVnw-&format=xml

This query returns about 25,000 pages.

Yes, we’ve just thrown out over 90 percent of the result set – but we are after the most relevant results, not simply the greatest number of results. Our new object refiners use SearchMonkey’s structured data to narrow your query from “pizza+Sunnyvale” to actual local business listings within those results. You can use BOSS to retrieve the same structured data and construct any presentation you like.

You can take it a step further and add any of these terms to the query:

• searchmonkey:video – restricts the result set to videos.
• searchmonkey:product – restricts the result set to products.
• searchmonkey:local – restricts the result set to local businesses.
• searchmonkey:event – restricts the result set to events.
• searchmonkey:document – restricts the result set to presentations, spreadsheets, and similar document formats.
• searchmonkey:discussion – restricts the result set to blogs and forums.
• searchmonkey:game – restricts the result set to Flash games.

What don’t I get?

Not all structured data we’ve collected is part of the BOSS API.  For example, some third parties who provide us with feeds have elected to keep that data outside of BOSS. Structured data annotations from technologies built by Yahoo! Research are also not available to third party developers via BOSS. However, we aim to include all data we find embedded in web pages that deploy microformats or RDFa.

Our goal is a successful semantic Web where we extract the semantics as we process Web content. Every page marked up with semantic data makes that much easier for us to extract meaning from that page. And it’s not just us! Google Video Search has recently adopted the same video markup (RDFa and Facebook Share) that SearchMonkey supports.

What’s next?

We will make many more object types available to you soon. In the mean time, you can learn more about SearchMonkey and how we acquire structured data annotations from this new from this post on the YDN Blog.

Kevin Haas

Senior engineering manager, Yahoo! SearchMonkey

We invite you to apply to qualify for this program to have Yahoo! Sponsored Search ads appear on your sites. You will need to provide details about your product, including information about your traffic sources, UI framework, and implementation.  Once your product is approved, you will have access to and support for Yahoo! Sponsored Search ads, and you will earn a revenue share.  You can apply at our partner’s site: www.ddc.com.

Please note that in signing up for this Sponsored Search ad program, you will be entering into a contract with a third party, not Yahoo!, and the third party will be providing support and sending you your earnings.  Other Yahoo! Search BOSS Ad partners may be online in the future, so stay tuned for updates.

By now most of you are aware of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search deal, which is still undergoing regulatory review.  While no decisions about BOSS have been made at this point, we will let you know as soon as we figure out the details. These key services will continue to operate for a period of time after we complete migrating our services and technology.

We are proud of the rich community of developers and entrepreneurs who share our enthusiasm for opening search and who continue to amaze us with innovative BOSS implementations. Thank you for your support.

Ashim Chhabra

The Yahoo! Search BOSS Team

Monday, October 5, 2009

Time: 10:45 a.m. -12 p.m.
Panel: Duplicate Content Issues: The Search Engine Edition
Speaker: Cris Pierry, Senior Director, Search, Yahoo! Search

Time: 3:45 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Panel: Maps, Maps, Maps!
Speaker: Atif Rafiq, Director, Product Marketing, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo!

Time: 3:45 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Panel: Trademarks & Paid Search: How Have Things Changed
Speaker: Laura Covington, Associate General Counsel, Global Brand and Trademarks, Yahoo!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Time: 12 p.m. -1:30 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Search Engines: Best Practices Edition
Speaker: Cris Pierry, Senior Director, Search, Yahoo

Time: 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Panel: Universal & Blended Search Opportunities
Speaker: Larry Cornett, Vice President of Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Time: 9 a.m. -10:15 a.m.
Panel: Search Meet Display; Display Meet Search
Speaker: Antony Taylor, VP, Display Platforms, Yahoo!

Time: 11:45 a.m. -12:45 p.m.
Panel: Managing Search Across Business Units
Speaker: David Roth, Director of Search Marketing, Yahoo!

Time: 2 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Paid Search Reps
Speaker: David Miller, Director, Sponsored Search Product Management, Yahoo! Inc.

See the complete list of panelists and location.

Yahoo! has also just launched a number of major changes to our core products, which include a new Yahoo! homepage, improved Yahoo! Mail, high-quality video calling in Yahoo! Messenger, and a suite of new Yahoo! Mobile experiences. The new Yahoo! Search page design aligns the experience between our new homepage, mail, and the search results page. This delivers a dynamic, compelling, and integrated experience that better understands what you are looking for so you can get things done quickly on the Web.

Most importantly, we designed this new page framework so that we can introduce and experiment with new search applications and features faster than before. Today’s launch is just the beginning of innovations to come.

Key highlights:

• Intelligent Search Results – Allows you to explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data. Over the past few months, even more enhanced results for product, local, entertainment, reference, social, and tech sites have been displayed automatically. With the new search page design, we have made it easier to see these riche results from an increasing number of sites.
• Feature-Rich Experience – Provides quick access to search features that make people’s online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad. Now it will be even easier to return to the research documents you have created while searching.
• Search Assist Expansion – With the new design, our powerful query assistance is still available directly below the search box, but we’ve also incorporated it into the left-hand column for quick access lower on the page, even when the Search Assist layer is hidden. You can use this column to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query. We have added Search Assist to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the U.S. with the launch of a new universal header.

Today we are also revamping our image search and video search results pages to present a consistent user experience. In the left-hand column on the image search results page, users can find an extension of the travel refiners that we introduced back in July, as well as celebrity and entertainment categories. When you search for celebs like “Matt Damon” or “Tina Fey,” Yahoo! Image Search will tap into the “web of objects” and present related people, movies, and TV shows in their appropriate categories.

Now, here’s the best part: Rather than building this new experience on top of our existing front-end technology, our talented engineering and design teams rebuilt much of the foundational markup/CSS/JavaScript for the SRP design and core functionality completely from scratch. This allowed us to get rid of old cruft and take advantage of quite a few new techniques and best practices, reducing core page weight and render complexity in the process.

Key points about performance:

• Improved total page load time – Even though the new design includes dozens of additional assistance features and graphical assets, we are seeing faster page loading time and significant speed improvements.
• Improved perceived load time – In addition to reducing the weight of the page, we also greatly reduced the perceived load time by sending the page in three semantically meaningful chunks: first the search box and page header, then the rest of the visible content, and finally JavaScript for rich behavior.
• Inline data URI images – We’re taking advantage of specialized techniques for modern browsers such as inline data URI images, which we use to generate our subtle repeating gradients. This improves perceived and real performance dramatically. For legacy browsers, we provide the same gradients with traditional image sprites.

What does this all mean for you? Quite simply, the new search page is faster because it was built with performance in mind from the start.

We’re thrilled to put the all-new Yahoo! Search results page in your hands today in the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Mexico, and India. You can learn more by checking out a tour that explains all of the features of this new experience. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the coming months, we will continue to deliver even more enhancements to this new experience, so be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!

Larry Cornett

Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

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

Dan Rampton
Yahoo! Search

First, we’d like to thank everyone who deployed microformats, RDFa, and feeds in response to our blog post in May. Thanks to your efforts, we’ve finished user testing for the new enhanced results templates and have deployed these templates in production. This means that in addition to Video, Documents, and Games, you can now add Products, Local Businesses, Event, Discussions, or News items to your pages. Anyone who provides structured data according to the specified format will automatically gain SearchMonkey default-on status, as long as it adheres to our terms of use.

For example, here are some results you’ll see when you search for products:

Here are some results you’ll see when you search for local businesses:

You can see the ratings, number of reviews, phone number, and address for local businesses right on the search results page. You can also see the ratings, price, and number of reviews for products, helping you decide which page fits your interest most, and find what you’re looking for faster.

In addition to these SearchMonkey templates, we’re also releasing a number of custom SearchMonkey default-on applications. Entertainment buffs will be particularly excited about a few of the Entertainment apps, including RottenTomatoes, Netflix, IMDB, and Yahoo! Movies.

The following are just a couple of examples you’ll see when you search for entertainment-related info:

Beyond entertainment, we’re also automatically turning on results for high performing sites in as the social networking, reference, and download categories. The list includes Friendster, Britannica, and FileHippo.

We laud the efforts that developers everywhere have put into developing the SearchMonkey ecosystem and their contribution toward improving the search experience for users.

Great apps are built every week so look forward to even more SearchMonkey in your search results in the future – we’re looking forward to it, too.

Yi-An Lin and Nick Cox

Senior Product Manager

Yahoo! Search

Some videos on the results page will display a “Play Now” link, which opens a large overlay window and plays the video on the results page. Users can watch part or all of the video, then close the window and resume browsing search results.

We are also embedding videos related to the one you are watching in the in-line video player window. Just click any thumbnail in the Related Video section and the video will start playing in the open in-line player window.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Manish Mohan Sharma and Sapna Chandiramani
Yahoo! Video Search Team

Click to play demo
We know that search has been a hot topic over the past few weeks, so we wanted to share with you what the Yahoo! Search team has been focusing on lately. Today, we are announcing a new search page design that makes search more personally relevant and helps people explore the things that matter most to them. It exemplifies how Yahoo! is continuing to innovate in search technology and the user experience.

A few weeks ago, Yahoo! began rolling out a new homepage that is tailored to your interests. You may also have noticed that the Yahoo! Search team began testing a new design that will unify the experience between the new homepage and our search results page. We’ve been doing a lot of research such as usability experiments and eye-tracking research so that we can bring you a more personally relevant search experience that better understands what you’re looking for and helps you get things done quickly on the Web.

Unified Design

One of the designs we have been testing aligns the page framework and design with the new Yahoo! Homepage. Not only does this create a more integrated Yahoo! product experience, it also provides quick access to valuable search-specific applications and features in the left-hand column. For example, the section titled “Show Results From” helps people explore the results that matter most to them through sites they know and love.

Quick Access to Search Features

About a month ago, we launched a great new note-taking application called Search Pad.  In our new search page design, you have even easier access to the research you’ve been doing right at the top of the left column. In addition, we have integrated the SearchScan and Safe Search feature settings on the left column so you can more easily manage your protection from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search.

Enhancing Search Assistance

Our search assistance features are still the most sophisticated query assistance technologies on the Web. With the new design, assistance is still easily available directly below the search box where you need it most.

In addition, we are also testing ways to allow you to explore results through the “Related Concepts” section in the left column even when the Search Assist layer is hidden.

SearchMonkey

We recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of SearchMonkey. Over the past months, we have been driving efforts toward increasing structured data on the Web, more uses for existing structured data, and easier ways to display enhanced results for some data types. With the new search page design, we will be making it even easier to see richer results from an increasing number of sites. For example, you can easily show all of the enhanced results from Wikipedia on the new search page.

We’re testing the new Yahoo! Search results page with a percentage of our U.S. visitors chosen at random, so you may be one of the few who get a chance to try it out. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the next few weeks, we will be adding more new features during these tests. Be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!

Larry Cornett

Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

We’d like to congratulate Vik Singh, an architect at Yahoo!, who has just been picked as one of the MIT’s  Technology Review 35 Young Innovators Under 35 of 2009 for his contributions to Yahoo! Search BOSS.  Since its launch, thousands of developers have issued millions of queries through Yahoo! Search BOSS to power some great, personalized search platforms.

Check out a Q&A and JellyTalk with Vik, where he talks about creative uses of BOSS and future innovations in search.

Congratulations, Vik!

Yahoo! Search Team

 The GeoDomainMap takes your location input and finds nearby neighborhoods. Then, it takes your keywords and appends your keywords, sans white space, and creates a domain name. It then checks the GoDaddy database of available domain names and returns those that are available. Each of the domain names are associated with a neighborhood, and thus a pair of latitude/longitude coordinates so what better way to display them then on a Bing Map?! Hover over the list and the popups will show on the map where the location within the domain is found. From the result list and the popup you can purchase the domain or add it to your wishlist. Is it no coincidence that Pearl Jam has a song called “Wishlist?” Hmmm – they’re probably PJ fans too.

A new spin on exploring domain name availability and worth your time to get your URI on board the location train.

CP – Follow Me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton 

The explosive popularity of Twitter is the best example of this opportunity. Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous. Innovative services like Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.

Search needs to keep up. Shortly after we launched Bing, we did an experiment with the team at Twitter, where we took a fairly small number of “celebrities” from Twitter and provided access to their tweets as part of the search result. Here is a great example.

But what if we take that to the next level? What if we indexed basically the whole public Twitter stream and made it available to customers?

We’re glad you asked that. Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now). Try it out. The Bing and Twitter teams want to know what you think.

How does this all work?

Were you as fascinated by the 6-year-old boy floating away in a balloon as we were? Was it a hoax? We know that people are going to twitter more and more for information surrounding all the latest chatter.

You can now search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favorite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else you use Twitter to stay on top of today.

The search results on people’s tweets will show up like this:

If you want to keep an eye on this topic, you can just watch the Tweets roll in. Or, click on “See more Tweets about…” to go to a page full of Tweets. On that page, you can change the ordering to “Best Match.” Here we arrange Tweets differently. If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower. For example, I saw a Tweet from ABC News ranked pretty high in the Best Match mode during the “boy in the balloon” fiasco. By the way, you won’t see any of your tweets if you protected or deleted them, and tweets don’t last more than 7 days in our index.

Are you a Taylor Swift fan?  Just think of all the links that are shared on twitter that have to do with Taylor. To help you find these links we sift through and find the most interesting and hot trending links that other search engines usually don’t pick up on. Below you can see a couple of interesting links shared by Twitter users – some news and some gossip.   

Instead of the usual captions that are used for links, we decided to give you a “social caption” and show you what people are saying about these links.

Our team has been using this product internally, below are some situations where it came in handy:

• Sean Suchter (my boss) and I avoided a closed freeway on a rainy Seattle day and made our flight home.
• Eric Scheel (principle program manager on the team) a photo-gear junkie, keeps up on early product reviews and  owners’ tweets, which helped him decide on his next purchase.
• My wife thinks I am almost cool because I know stuff about Taylor Swift.

We’d love to hear some stories from you about how this may have helped you. Of course, we also want to hear your ideas about how to keep improving this product.

Paul Yiu and the Bing Social Search Team

*Please note that at this time this is a US only feature.

Other posts of interest:

Bringing a Bit of Twitter to Bing

Bing is at Web 2.0 Summit

We tried to assuage his fears (and salvage his marriage!) by assuring him that if ever there were a destination worthy of a repeat visit, it was Paris. But his query got me thinking: What makes a destination worthy of visiting again and again? And are there certain destinations one shouldn’t return to?

I’d have to answer a resounding “no” to the second question. Even the smallest towns, the seemingly “stuck in time” backwaters, can change drastically over the course of several years. Just ask anyone who’s visited her hometown after a long time away.

But will that one new thing be worth planning an entire vacation around? Let’s be realistic: We all have limited time, and most of us have limited funds. Revisiting a destination, rather than going somewhere new, only makes sense when:

• It can’t be swallowed in one gulp. Some places are so jam-packed with cultural attractions, with natural wonders, with great nightlife opportunities or extraordinary restaurants, that they inspire repeat visits. Going there just once practically infects travelers with the nagging itch to return.
• It actively engages you. Destinations where one can practice a skill or pursue a hobby also win travelers’ loyalty. My friend Will first visited Arizona’s Lake Havasu when he was 17, and so loved the boating and fishing opportunities there that he bought a vacation home in the area 10 years later. Golf destinations, scuba-diving hotspots, areas with great antiquing, hiking meccas and even simple beach destinations often inspire this sort of loyalty.
• It’s a chameleon. To quote the well-worn phrase, the only thing that doesn’t “stay in Vegas” is Vegas itself. Like the theme parks of Orlando or the city of Dubai, it’s a destination that’s constantly reinventing itself. For a certain type of traveler, the creatively manufactured thrills these types of destinations offer provide ample incentive to return.

Here’s my list of places that fit some or all of those criteria; they’re destinations that I could revisit endlessly without feeling in some way gypped. (I’d add New York City to the list, except I live there and so can’t count myself as a visitor.)

• Yellowstone National Park
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Washington, D.C.
• London
• The Dingle Peninsula, Ireland
• Paris
• Barcelona
• Istanbul
• Beijing
• Bali

So that’s my list, in no particular order. Which destinations would make it onto yours? And are there any places you wouldn’t want to visit a second time? Share your thoughts with other travelers in the comments section.

On October 29th, Vexcel and Microsoft partner, IDV Solutions, will be presenting on the integration of the Virtual Earth Server and IDV’s Visual Fusion enterprise mashup platform for offline business intelligence solutions.

Check it out. You can register here. -=Virtual Jerry

• Video: Save energy via Bing
• Video: Bing powers the Climate Times Help Engine

Bing is excited to be part of annual Web 2.0 Summit that kicked off today. This is the annual O’Reilly conference where visionaries and executives across key industries will present their unique perspective on the Web’s future-in-flux and how the tools and principles of Web 2.0 are impacting their businesses.  Bing’s presence will be highlighted by Qi Lu’s plenary conversation with Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, on Wednesday 10/21.  The footage is scheduled to be uploaded to blip.tv later in the week if you want to check it out.  

If you’re attending, we want to talk to you!  Be sure to drop by the Microsoft Lounge featuring a live-feed from the general session, refreshments and representatives from Bing, Windows 7, IE, Windows Live, BizSpark, as well as industry partners speakTECH and Telligent Systems.  Think of it like this – what Bing is to search overload, the lounge is to people overload. 

Oh by the way, we’re hosting an invite-only party at Ruby Skye on 10/21 .  It’s going to be a blast with food, drinks (21 and over stuff) and DJs and our featured act, Janelle Monáe, Queen of Cybersoul.  If you’re in the SF area, we have a few invites to give out.  Follow @Bing for details on how you can snag one!

Side note:  If you see people wearing a t-shirt stating “Bing Love (TC50 startup)”, that’s us.  Be sure to say ‘hi’! 

Aya Zook – Product Manager, Bing

Beginning on Oct. 26, @fareologist will be giving away some amazing prizes to our loyal fans including $500 gift cards to Alaska Airlines (which just announced some great new routes), US Airways, JetBlue Airways, Marriott Hotels, Ritz-Carlton Hotels & Resorts and Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. We’ll be tweeting two travel-focused trivia questions each day at random times from Oct. 26 until Oct. 30 — that’s 10 chances to win! Each tweet will be marked with #TwavelTwivia so you can easily search for and find our tweets.

As with our last contest, all of the answers to our questions can easily be found using Bing.com, Bing Travel or other social media outlets. The answers may be hidden within a Bing Travel blog post, article or slide show; may be on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter; or can be discovered through Bing Travel’s unique travel tools. We’ll accept answers for one hour after we pose the question, and one lucky person with the correct response will win one of our prizes through a random drawing.

Important: Make sure that you respond in this format so that you get entered to win: “#TravelTwivia @fareologist [Answer here]”

Don’t miss out on the chance to get your hands on some great travel prizes. Be sure to keep an eye on your Twitter feed for our twice-daily #TwavelTwivia questions. Good luck! And may the best twaveler win.

We’d also like to give a special thanks to @AlaskaAir for partnering with us on this contest. Check out its Web site to see if Alaska Airlines is landing in your city with its new routes.

Not on Twitter yet? Sign up here and be sure to follow @fareologist for your chance to win.

* No purchase necessary. Open only to legal residents of the 50 US and DC 18+. See Official Rules for details.

Episode #3

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Stefan- Bing

It’s amazing what a weekend away can do. You can sleep in and recharge the batteries at a cozy inn or chic hotel, sample great food and wine or get out on the hiking trail. All you need to do is pack up the car and hit the road.

In a new series of articles on Bing Travel from Travel+Leisure, we offer suggestions for top weekend getaways from the Northeast, Southwest and West Coast. You’ll find details about where to go antiquing in the Hudson River Valley, hiking in Zion National Park, marveling at the modern architecture in Palm Springs or feasting on seafood in the Pacific Northwest.

What are your favorite places for a quick weekend getaway? Share your tips and suggestions in the comments section. 

Also, for those of you who missed my web cast last week about Bing Maps and SharePoint, the replay is available on demand.

I hope to see you at the conference…or, in Vegas baby Vegas!

CP