While Yahoo may not be cultivating some of their more traditional search offerings, that doesn’t mean they’ve left search alone. Beyond developing certain niche aspects of their site, the company has also been hard at work adding value to Yahoo Search BOSS. BOSS V2, announced in October of last year, is now complete and ready for developers to use as they see fit.
For those not already familiar with Yahoo’s BOSS lineup, let’s start with a definition. BOSS V2 is a developer API that allows users to tap into the plentiful world of search data, including image, web page, and other divisions of search. The cost of this service is provided on a CPM basis (cost per 1000 uses), with reduced costs for developers who only want to use the image, news, or “limited web” (a trimmed down index with a lower refresh rate) portions of Yahoo’s database. As a bonus option, Yahoo also added a “spelling” version of the search, available at $0.10 CPM, that allows developers to execute spelling queries.
The most appealing element in Yahoo’s BOSS V2, though, is the search page advertisements provided by Yahoo – that allow you, as the search provider, to make some money. While this form of monetization may not be profitable for all developers, it will at least subsidize the price of BOSS itself.
While Yahoo hasn’t come right out to say it, the advertising and search index comes almost completely from Bing’s search. The API, however, is a product that’s entirely Yahoo’s. Those interested in starting with the service should visit theBOSS page.
[via the Yahoo Blog]
