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July 28, 2005

A Look at Search Interface Protocols and Specifications

Developers and other search geeks out there might find this draft document that lists and discusses a number of search interface protocols and specifications worthy of a read/bookmark. The paper comes from the CORDRA project at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks to Puzzlepieces for the tip. Btw, Michael Fagan (publisher of Puzzlepieces) also notes several other protocols/specifications that aren't listed in the paper.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:25 PM | Permalink

March 15, 2005

OpenSearch: Add Your Own Search Engine To A9 (Or Potentially, Anywhere)

A9's new OpenSearch program out today allows anyone with search results to create their own "button" that can be added to the A9 search engine, allowing users there to get custom specialty or vertical search results.

A number of new buttons A9 users can add have already been posted on the site, in conjunction with the announcement that was made at the Etech conference today from Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. You can add things like a NASA search, a Flickr Photo Search or even a search for chess games. It's pretty slick.

Just because you create a button doesn't mean that users will automatically get them, of course. They'll have to use the page above to find options, then choose to add them. And that may happen only if you've created the search and submitted it. How to create and submit is covered in the help documents for OpenSearch.

From what I can tell, OpenSearch is built around adding some minimal extensions to RSS, which seems to be Amazon's way of escaping criticism that it's trying to do something proprietary and gain acceptance. Indeed, while A9 will tap into these search RSS feeds, potentially anyone else could, as well, as it explains:

OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol, OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content syndication.

For a bit more, see John Battelle's post that covers the announcement and has some comments for A9 head Udi Manber: A9 Launches "Open Search" - Vertical Search, Syndicated.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:16 PM | Permalink

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