July 31, 2008

Yuil Is Dead - Long Live Yuil

Today TechCrunch reported on the birth of a new search engine: Yuil. Now Yuil is dead.

Yuil (pronounced yule) was a short-lived Yahoo-powered mashup designed to look like Cuil.

Apparently the Yahoo Boss mashup -- something of a search engine Frankenstein monster -- was destroyed by its inventor.

Yuil was designed by Yahoo VP of Platforms, Sam Pullara. Yuil was a brilliant marketing move designed to show off the new Yahoo BOSS API. BOSS gives developers a high level of control over SERPs generated by Yahoo's search engine.

The primary difference between the Yahoo Boss API, and the standard API-based engines is the ability to manipulate and reorder the results.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 25, 2008

So You Wanna Be a SearchMonkey?

Yahoo is creating some wide open spaces for web developers. This is no API playground, people. It's a zoo.

SearchMonkey will let developers go hog wild with search results. Simple links are so old school. Listings could now include photos, reviews, ratings and contact information via developer mashups. Want portability? You got it.

And if you don't want it, you should. Yesterday, I reported that search is integral in finding social media results that affect a consumer's opinion about brands. SearchMonkey should be a tremendous tool to help influence your online reputation.

The launch party for SearchMonkey is May 15th. Here are the details:

When:May 15, 2008, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where:Yahoo! Headquarters – Url's CafÃ©, 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

RSVP: Register at upcoming.org AND send your full name and company name to searchmonkeyevent@yahoo-inc.com. Space is limited.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:24 AM | Permalink

June 4, 2007

Yahoo! Launches Search Marketing Commercial API Program

Yahoo! announced they are starting a Search Marketing Commercial API program. The press release details the levels of access the API will provide.

Hoping to drive growth and innovation in digital advertising through dedicated third-party partner services Yahoo has opened access to the Panama platform technology.

The release is below:

Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today announced the Yahoo! Search Marketing Commercial API Program, which provides businesses and developers of all sizes free, open access to the "Panama" search marketing application program interfaces (APIs). Through this program, advertisers, developers and commercial partners including ad agencies and technology providers can easily build upon Yahoo!'s core search marketing technologies to enhance their existing business offerings or create brand new search marketing tools and applications. In addition, the program provides a range of value-added services to help commercial partners gain greater insight into Yahoo!'s search marketing product roadmap and fully leverage Yahoo! Search Marketing's APIs for their clients.

"Yahoo! is dedicated to driving third-party innovation and success because we know it is vital to the future growth of the online advertising industry," said Susan Decker, head of Yahoo!'s Advertiser & Publisher Group. "By providing open access to our technology, we are making a clear investment in our advertising partners, creating new opportunities for developers, and taking a key step toward achieving our vision to build the industry's leading advertising and publishing ecosystem."

The program provides free access to Yahoo! Search Marketing's robust and scalable APIs, and offers growing businesses optional fee-based services to accommodate their wide ranging needs. These services can be customized to include significant technical support, product roadmap visibility and co-marketing services to provide open, reliable partnership support to companies creating and selling commercial advertising applications.

The program provides three levels of commercial partnership, including:

-- Basic - Designed for small advertising agencies and early stage technology companies. Provides free access to the Panama platform and technical support, and leverages the Yahoo! commercial brand to develop and launch applications in the market. -- Advanced - Designed for fast growing technology companies and mid-size advertising agencies. Provides access to the Panama platform, dedicated technical account management support, service level commitments and listing in partner application directory. -- Elite - Designed for leading technology companies and large advertising agencies. Enables these partners to leverage the Panama platform, resources and brand via regular business review, product council, roadmap coordination and joint marketing activities. Early participants in the Elite tier include Efficient Frontier, Omniture, SearchIgnite and The Search Agency.

"We are excited to be an Elite partner under Yahoo! Search Marketing's Commercial API Program. This new program offers mission-critical service and support levels as well as product roadmap insight that will allow us to deliver greater value to our clients," said John Mellor, senior vice president of business development and corporate strategy for Omniture, a leading provider of online business optimization software. "We are especially pleased with Yahoo!'s open and customized approach to working with third-party partners, and we're looking forward to working closely with them to build on their APIs and create new offerings."

"Yahoo! Search Marketing's Commercial API Program will provide us with the expert guidance, support and commitments we need to effectively grow our business," said Ellen Siminoff, president and chief executive office of Efficient Frontier, a leading search engine marketing company. "Additionally, Yahoo!'s commitment to grow the online advertising industry and provide open API access for everyone makes them a leading partner for companies like ours."

Yahoo! Search Marketing's Commercial API Program is immediately available to agencies, technology providers, search engine marketing firms and developers through the Yahoo! account management team or by visiting: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/api.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:49 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Can Developers & API Save Yahoo From Its Peanut Butter Crisis

Danny reported yesterday on the internal Yahoo memo that called for Yahoo to make cut backs due to them spreading out the Yahoo resources like peanut butter. In reaction to that Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo wrote Yahoo's Peanut Butter APIs which is strongly supported by News.com's Yahoo seeks geek credibility. Jeremy argues that APIs are part of the solution to the problem of being "everything to everyone." The News.com article explains that this is part of Yahoo's appeal. I tend to agree with Jeremy's argument, but as he said, "Brad is very right about some things and terribly wrong about others." It is also important to note, as Danny IMed me, "Hey Yahoo! Microsoft Is Jelly To Your Peanut Butter. Make A Sandwich!" More details on that here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Yahoo Hack Day's Success & Yahoo Mail API Coming

It sounds like Yahoo's first open Hack Day was a big success, featuring even a performance by Beck. Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz has a nice roundup in Yahoo Open Hack Day: Hell Yes!. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington served at MC of the event, and All Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize post covers the top winners, briefly. Meanwhile, Yahoo Mail introduces web APIs from Niall Kennedy covers how a new API for Yahoo Mail is coming, with commentary from others here on TechMeme.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:42 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2006

Yahoo Hack Day Starts Today

Yahoo is holding Hack Day today and Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny is excited about it. He compiled a list of ways to stay on the new hacks, mashups and products announced at Yahoo's Hack Day. He has encouraged everyone writing content about this event to tag your content as "hackday06". Hack Day photos tagged at Flickr, content bookmarked at del.ici.us, other content at Technorati and some more here. Also, note, the Hack Day blog is at http://developer.yahoo.net/hackday/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:45 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

Yahoo Releases Yahoo Answers API

The Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of the Yahoo Answers API. The API will allow developers to pull questions from the Yahoo Answers database by search, category, and user. You can even get the answers for those questions. More details at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/.

Postscript: Jeremy Zawodny suggests to me that the Yahoo Answers API will soon allow writing to the Yahoo Answers database, and not just read only access. Niche answer social networks, here we come?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:46 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

Mashups and Other Fun with Flickr

A big part of the appeal of Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing service, is its ease of use. It's not only easy to upload and work with your own images, but it's also a snap to search for and play around with images uploaded by others—in relatively sophisticated ways, if you take advantage of the Flickr API to create mashups that combine images with other applications. In today's SearchDay article, Hacking Flickr I review a new book that's part of the O'Reilly Hacks series that shows you how to take maximum advantage of Flickr's capabilities.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:59 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

Trovetopia - Yahoo Shopping Test Bed Site

Gary Price at ResourceShelf noticed that Yahoo registered two trademarks: "Trovetopia" and "THE N9NE," with Trovetopia also being the name of an active Yahoo shopping site.

I'm not sure about THE N9NE, but according to Chris Saito [thanks for the quick response!] Trovetopia turns out to be a "test bed for [Yahoo!] APIs its built entirely using the web services available on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

It's cool to see Yahoo playing around with its own APIs. Yahoo Tech is another place to see the power of the APIs. Considering that I get an email each week about people interested in using a shopping comparison engine API, it's smart to put these services on display.

Posted by Brian Smith at 9:48 AM | Permalink

March 7, 2006

Yahoo Opens APIs for Photos, Calendar, MyWeb and Shopping

InformationWeek.com reports that Yahoo has added four new APIs to its Developer Network. The new APIs are for Yahoo Photos, Yahoo Calendar, Yahoo MyWeb and Yahoo Shopping. All of Yahoo APIs are available at http://developer.yahoo.net/ free of charge, for non commercial usage. Today, they also announced the Yahoo Shopping API for commercial usage. In order to promote the community's development efforts with these APIs, Yahoo opened up an application gallery (should be live soon) to show off some of the great applications created with these APIs.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:57 PM | Permalink

December 8, 2005

Yahoo Releases International Web Search Services; Yahoo Switzerland Search Goes Live

Here's one for the developers out there. Yahoo's Toby Elliott points out that the comany has just released the Yahoo Web Search API for all regional and country sites. The blog post has all the specifics. Briefly, here's what you'll learn.

+ You can now use the Web Search API to access the Yahoo UK Search, Yahoo France Search, Yahoo Germany Search and all the other available country-specific engines.

+ Yahoo Japan has made a Web Search API available in Japanese.

+ Yahoo Switzerland Search has just launched. Web services available soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:27 PM | Permalink

November 3, 2005

Yahoo Maps Adds New Features and Tools

Yahoo has upgraded its Maps service, integrating local search results and adding a lot of cool "wow" factors to the service. They've also released a bunch of tools for developers to hack their own maps. More in today's SearchDay article, Yahoo Enhances Maps, Integrates Local Search.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2005

A New API From Yahoo: Yahoo Shopping User Product Review

Web Developers might be interested in learning that earlier today Yahoo released the Yahoo Shopping User Product Review API.

The User Product Review service allows you to display user reviews about a particular product. These reviews can be sorted in three ways: latest reviews, most recommended reviews or the highest rated reviews; either in ascending or descending order.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:19 PM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

Try WSFinder To Find Web Services & APIs

Trying to track down which company is offering an API these days? The new WSFinder service is a search service / wiki that allows this. One of the founders Chris Law tells me they've got about 90 APIs and web services that developers can find and tap into. You can keyword search or browse directory categories such as these related to search: Blog Search, Book Search, Desktop Search, Enterprise Search, Maps and Geography, Product Search, Shopping and Web Search. Have fun!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:49 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2005

Yahoo Partners With Web Analytics Companies

Yahoo Search Marketing Partners With Top Web Analytics Companies To Provide Enhanced Reporting and Click Protection for Advertisers Source: News Release

From the release: Yahoo Search Marketing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo Inc., today announced that it has signed agreements to extend its search marketing application program interfaces (APIs) to leading web analytics providers Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends and WebSideStory.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:57 PM | Permalink

August 2, 2005

Yahoo Shopping API Now Available

News from the Yahoo Developer Network today that they've just released an API for Yahoo Shopping. Details and documentation are posted here.

With the Product Search API, developers can search by keyword (product names); limit the search to a specific merchant, price range or product category, and filter merchants according to their Yahoo! User ratings. The Price Comparison Grid API gives developers access to millions of products offered by multiple merchants, returning base price, tax and shipping info and total price (based on zip code).

Posted by Gary Price at 1:16 PM | Permalink

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

June 30, 2005

Yahoo Maps API Released

It's about six months until the holiday season but web developers who like to work with maps have already been given a couple of gifts. Yesterday, Google released an API for Google Maps and today Yahoo has released an API for Yahoo Maps.

According to the news release the Yahoo Maps API is free, backwards compatible, and builds on the GEORSS standard.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:27 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2005

Yahoo Bolsters Personal Search

That didn't take long: Last week, reviewing the new Google My Web Search service, I wrote "don't expect Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN or AOL Search to stand still." Tonight, Yahoo has rolled out a significant enhancement to the My Yahoo personal search features that the company launched last October. New features include search history, the ability to save cached copies of pages, new sharing tools and more. Tomorrow's SearchDay article, Yahoo Launches My Web Personal Search (available to blog readers now), gives a rundown of the new service from Yahoo.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:00 PM | Permalink

April 6, 2005

More On Analytic Vendor Access To Yahoo's API

Earlier I posted how Yahoo was apparently not allowing some analytics vendors access to its advertiser API. Controversy Mounts over Yahoo! API Access from ClickZ follows up on that story, noting that the newly-formed Web Analytics Association put out a statement saying it was concerned about any restricted access. For its part, Yahoo put out its own statement saying that there's no change to its intent to provide open access.

Specifically, Yahoo is telling everyone:

Yahoo! Search Marketing's (Overture) position on APIs and open access has not changed. We support all advertisers, SEMs and agencies that desire to have direct access through APIs, and continue to expand the numbers of companies participating in our program.

In addition, we've been working proactively with web analytics companies to determine how they would like to add value to their customers' campaign tracking needs, how we can expand our API program to help them achieve that, and how that can extend the value of advertising on Yahoo! and the Overture network. This does not represent a change in policy for Overture / Yahoo!

WebSideStory, the analytics firm named as having been denied access, didn't comment in the article. Frank Watson, who raised the issue of the denial in his blog and in this Search Engine Watch Forum thread, explained his understanding was that the denial was more of a "not now" rather than a "not at all," suggesting that new analytics vendors not already using the API may get access in the future.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:42 PM | Permalink

April 5, 2005

Yahoo Auto-Linker Tool For Adding Links To Content

Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped has created Yahoo Auto-Linker, which taps into the Yahoo API to automatically insert links into any content you might have on your web site.

For example, say I wanted to add some links to this text from an earlier blog post that Chris Sherman wrote:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Using Philipp's tool, I get links added like this:

Why would I do this? I wouldn't! But Aaron Wall correctly suggests that those looking to create fake content that seems real by having a few links scattered in might find this useful.

Of course, others might find legit reasons for making use of adding the links, such as having a fast way to perhaps add links to topics that could use further definition.

That brings me back to why I wouldn't use such a tool for anything other than fun. I'd want to really understand exactly what sources are being used. This tool, from what I can tell, simply uses whatever is the first listing for a particular word on Yahoo to be the link. First isn't necessarily the best.

Interestingly, I'm guessing the Google API is also being employed as well. By default, the links will be generated from Yahoo results. However, you can choose to have Google as an option. Here's that same text using links generated out of Google. I've bolded those where Google comes up with different destinations than Yahoo:

In either case, you can also have links take a nofollow attribute, as I've done with these examples. Have fun giving it a play. Philip provides a few more details here: Yahoo Auto-Linker. Also note that despite the name, this is completely unrelated to the Google Toolbar AutoLink feature that automatically inserts links into pages that are viewed by those using the latest version of the Google Toolbar.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:14 AM | Permalink

March 24, 2005

Yahoo To Restrict SEM & Agency API Access?

Is Yahoo going to withdraw API access to SEM firms, agencies and other third-party companies that manage online ad spend? So hears Frank Watson, AKA Search Engine Watch Forums moderator AussieWebmaster. In Is Yahoo Destined To Be The Next LookSmart? on his new blog (well worth a regular read), he looks at how new new analytic firms are being allowed in and how there's no assurance existing contracts will continue.

What's the big deal? If you currently use a third party to manage your bids, this would make it much harder -- perhaps impossible for some firms -- to access Yahoo. Yes, they might be able to go back to screen scraping, but then they could also likely expect legal action over that.

"Individual" access to the API wouldn't be tampered with, Frank reports. The good news there is that since it's your account, you might insist that Yahoo allow the company of your choice to use your individual access to manage your account.

In the end, I'm with Frank in hoping such a move doesn't happen. Both Yahoo and Google (and MSN to come) need to fully embrace search marketing agencies and others as their friends, rather than competitors. That's because in the end, none of them individually is going to be trusted to do purchases on other properties. For a bit more on this, see my past post Search Publishers Not Friends Of Agencies, SEMs.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our forum thread, Yahoo Could Be Dropping API Access to PPC

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:34 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2005

Yahoo Posts Ad Guidelines & Ad API Info

Yahoo has posted new guidelines about what's acceptable in its search advertising plus some information about its long-standing API system for advertisers.

In my Overture Says No To Guns, Sort Of post, I explained how Yahoo needed to assemble an easy guide to what allowed -- and what's not -- in search ads. The new Unacceptable Content page from Yahoo now provides this guidance. FYI, Google posted a similar guide last year, as explained more in my Google Posts New Ad Guidelines post.

I've also written about the Yahoo API offered to advertisers, something that hasn't been documented on the Yahoo or Overture sites. They've corrected that now, and the new Overture Web Services page provides more info.

For further background, see my The Overture API: Advertiser Web Services post. Also see the Yahoo Search Makes APIs Publicly Available post for info about the new API that taps into Yahoo Search, rather than Yahoo's advertising system.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:40 PM | Permalink

March 1, 2005

Yahoo Search Makes APIs Publicly Available

Danny, Chris and I are here in NY at SES but we're still trying to post items to the blog. Here's some big news (especially for the developers out there) from Yahoo!

Yahoo! Search application programming interfaces (APIs) are now publicly available from the just announced Yahoo Search Developer Network.

The YSDN features Yahoo! Search APIs which span Web search verticals, search engine marketing and direct advertising products including:

+ Web Search + Image Search + Video Search + News Search + Local Search + Spelling Correction + Related Searches + Overture

APIs enable developers and webmasters to easily create search-enabled applications that leverage Yahoo! Search Technology. Each API provides developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per day. In addition to providing web search services, the Yahoo Search Developer Network provides public access to the APIs the Overture division of Yahoo! has provided to its partners since 2001.

I'm sure Jerry Yang will have more to say about the YSDN when he chats with Danny during a keynote "interview" later today.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:01 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Search APIs & The Build Or Buy Management Question

In Search Engine APIs: Right for You? at ClickZ, Kevin Lee looks at the how the Google AdWords API now means all major paid listing programs allow for direct, automated bid management. Should you then build your own tool or outsource to someone like Kevin who might do it for you? He lists a number of things to consider.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:49 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2005

The Overture API: Advertiser Web Services

With the rumors going about Google's API, it's worth noting that Overture already has one -- and says this has been the case since 2001.

Called Advertiser Web Services, AWS allows Overture advertisers to interact with their campaigns through an XML format. Overture tells me:

It serves as a conduit for interacting directly with Overture's products and tools and provides an open platform and universal data format that can be adapted to manage Overture accounts, listings, bids and more.
The automation capabilities provided XML API are more efficient than the standard web based UI, reducing cost per transaction or allowing current advertiser resources to focus on optimization and other value-added roles.
It offers the ability to create customized applications with automated business rules that govern Overture campaign management and optimization
Provides account, campaign and keyword performance reporting in readable format to a licensee's back-end systems
It's free to Overture advertisers but fee-based for technology providers and third parties. Overture says when fees are charged, these are only to cover any actual costs incurred to maintain the system.

The API doesn't allow advertisers to cherry-pick which sites in the Overture network that they'll target. But the rumor that Google's API will allows this is just that -- a rumor, and one I find surprising and perhaps caused by some confusion between managing campaigns and controlling where ads will actually appear.

How to find out more about Overture Advertiser Web Services? Sadly, there's no page at Overture I can point you at. Instead, contact your ad rep.

Postscript: An info page has now been posted.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:40 PM | Permalink

September 22, 2004

A Yahoo API?

What if Yahoo were to offer an API similar to the Google API that's offered. That's along the lines of what Jeremy Zawodny's asking for advice on: Web Services You Wish Yahoo Offered? Got some ideas you want him to bring up informally with his employer Yahoo? Fire away!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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