What is SearchMonkey?
SearchMonkey is a framework for creating small applications that enhance Yahoo! search results with additional data and structure, such as images, key/value pairs, and additional links. Yahoo! Search users can add SearchMonkey applications to their profile on an opt-in basis. Figure 1.1, “From Basic to Enhanced” illustrates the difference between a basic search result and the same search result enhanced with structured data:
Each application triggers on a given URL pattern, such as en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*. If a search result URL matches the trigger URL pattern of the user's SearchMonkey application, the application, enhances the displayed search result with additional data.
For example, a user has added a SearchMonkey application that triggers on yelp.com pages. The user searches for "Higuma Japanese Restaurant", and one of the top search results is http://www.yelp.com/biz/higuma-japanese-restaurant-redwood-city. This URL result triggers the user's SearchMonkey yelp.com application, which enhances the result with ratings, contact information, and other data. This extra data comes from the core Yahoo! Search index, open standards such as microformat and RDF data, live web service API calls (including OpenSearch XML services), and numerous other data services.
What is SearchMonkey NOT?
SearchMonkey is NOT a method for building a Yahoo! search engine that returns only results for your site. Site-specific search engines have been available from Yahoo! for years, but they are an independent concept from SearchMonkey.
SearchMonkey does NOT enable you to reorder results on a search page. You can use SearchMonkey to change your search result display so that they are more attractive and useful, but SearchMonkey does not change algorithmic rankings.
SearchMonkey's benefits for end users include:
dramatically improving search results from trusted sites and brands
personalizing the user's search experience, enabling them to add applications on an opt-in basis
providing highlighted, relevant links and structured data to end users, enabling them to complete tasks faster
SearchMonkey's benefits for site owners include:
enabling you to leverage semantic information embedded in your pages, exposing that information to a massive audience
enabling you to mash up data from a wide variety of sources in creative ways
increasing the quantity and quality of your traffic, by giving users better information and helping them determine whether pages are truly relevant
Once you finish your application, you can distribute it to users through site badges and buttons that users can click to add your application to their search profiles. This enables you to promote your application directly on your site and distribute it virally. If your application is highly polished and stable, you can submit it to the Yahoo! Gallery repository where other developers can add the application to their preferences and distribute them virally through links and site badges.
Applications can appear as an Enhanced Result that reconfigures the search result itself, or as an Infobar that adds a expandable pane below the result containing additional information. Both templates have been evaluated in Yahoo! usability labs and designed to optimize the user experience. For more information about how to design your applications based on lessons drawn from our research, refer to “Presentation Application Best Practices”.
This section describes some example applications you could create with SearchMonkey. Some SearchMonkey applications are of general interest, while others target particular niches ("geeks", "Metallica fans"), or are just meant to be silly, or toys. You could design an application that displays:
public contact information and photos for a social networking site
a blog post's date, number of comments, categories and tags, along with the blogger's profile information
cover art, genre information, and links to sample mp3s for a music site
pictures of computer hardware, technical specifications, and pricing for a computer vendor
structured information about API methods and classes for a developer site
a short list of possible French translations/synonyms for all terms in an English dictionary site
entries for an encyclopedia site, rewritten in Klingon
an infobar that provides a random Shakespeare quote for each search result (or possibly even a not-so-random Shakespeare quote, based on some sort of clever textual analysis...)
For more examples of SearchMonkey applications, visit the Yahoo! Search Gallery.
