A ‘BOSS’ idea!

Search engine company Yahoo! announced today (10/07/2008) that it is launching a customised web search service that will allow third parties an ‘unprecedented level of access to Yahoo! search technology’.

The new ‘Build Your Own Search Service’, abbreviated BOSS, will give external sites the ability to re-rank and control the presentation of search results. Yahoo! has said that BOSS will enable ‘developers to blend Yahoo! Search results from Web, news and image indexes with any data source from across the Web’.

The service is an addition to the search engine provider’s ‘Open Strategy‘, and builds upon other recent launches such as SearchMonkey. Yahoo! believes this latest project will help third parties to ‘deliver industry leading results‘ without the cost incurred in building ‘Web-scale search experiences’.

In time Yahoo! hope to generate advertising revenue from the new search initiative. The firm is also working with top technological universities, and expects the service to help academics to research search engines in a way that was previously impossible.

Commenting on the launch, chief strategist for Yahoo! Search, Prabhakar Raghavan, has said that “BOSS opens up the playing field for developers and companies to disrupt the search market, become principals in search and build new Web search experiences that offer more choice for users.” ‘Build Your Own Search Service’ is expected to shake up the market, possibly challenging the success of other service engines, such as MSN and Google.

A beta version of BOSS is now available as an API.

Source: Yahoo! Inc

Author: Vicki Cole, 4Ps Marketing

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