Accessing Structured Data using BOSS

Yahoo! Search BOSS provides access to structured data acquired through SearchMonkey. Currently, we are only exposing data that has been semantically marked up and subsequently acquired by the Yahoo! Web Crawler. In the near future, we will also expose structured data shared with us in SearchMonkey data feeds. In both cases, we will respect site owner requests to opt-out of structured data sharing through BOSS.

How Does it Work?

Structured data sharing currently works as follows:

1. Site owner implements semantic markup to identify structured data on its pages
2. Yahoo! Web Crawler encounters embedded markup and indexes structured data
3. BOSS developer includes "view=searchmonkey_rdf" or "view=searchmonkey_feed" parameter in his or her BOSS Web API request
4. BOSS returns all available structured data in API response via XML or JSON

Semantic Web Formats

SearchMonkey acquires structured data marked up with the following open standards:

• hAtom - Represents a subset of the Atom syndication format
• hCalendar - Represents calendar dates and events, using a representation of the iCalendar standard
• hCard - Represents people, companies, organizations, and places, using a representation of the vCard standard
• hReview - Represents reviews of products, services, businesses, and events
• XFN - Represents human relationships using hyperlinks
• Geo - Represents geographic coordinates
• rel-tag - Marks up the destination of a hyperlink as an author-designated tag
• adr - Represents address information

• Dublin Core - Allows developers to specify document metadata
• FOAF - Friend of a Friend specifies personal profiles and social networks
• SIOC - Specifies elements in blogs, forums and Q&A sites
• Other supported vocabularies - See the SearchMonkey documentation for a list of other supported vocabularies

Contact Us

• Feedback & Questions - If you have questions or comments about accessing structured data through BOSS, please post them on our Developer Forum
• Site Owners - If you're a site owner and would like to discuss participating or opting out of Structured Data sharing through BOSS, please email us: bossmonkey AT yahoo-inc.com