Yahoo! BOSS and trainspotting

Trainspotting with Yahoo! BOSS Ted DRAKE | Yahoo! France | June 2, 2009 (a)

What is BOSS? WHAT: Yahoo! Search BOSS is a set of tools that developers, start-ups and established internet companies can use to build next generation search experiences. WHY: To encourage innovation and also generate additional opportunities to drive volume for Yahoo! Search.

BOSS Search Terms that allow users to:

Re-rank results

Blend results/content sources

Use any monetization platform

Access unlimited queries

Present results in any way

Brand their products in any way

Features:

Web/Image/News/Spelling

Key Terms (from Search Assist)

SearchMonkey Structured Data

Expanded Abstracts

Page data from Search Exp.

40+ lang/region pairs

Porn/Adult filtering

Mashup Framework

Delicious data

BOSS Lens (Summer 2009) Sorting options

Refiners

Property

# of comments

- Author

Native branding & presentation style

Structured data

Comments

Author

Date

Shortcuts YSM Ads

BOSS is a Data API, not a Search API

Meet Tom the Trainspotter (b)

Not this Tom

Tom’s Train Site

/blog/

/photos/

/schedules/ (.xls)

/maps/

/blueprints/ (.pdf)

/spottings/ (geolocated)

/forum/ (was active 10 years ago)

/twitter/

Let’s bring that information to life (c)

Tom’s Trains Search

Tom wants to integrate the data across his site.

One search box for everything on www.tomstrains.com

The “site:” query filter limits search to a single domain.

/ysearch/web/v1/bittern+site=tomstrains.com? (1)

Category Search

/ysearch/web/v1/bittern+site=tomstrains.com+inurl=maps (2)

Grab Related Photos

Tom wants to display related photos from his photo gallery

/ysearch/images/v1/flying+banana? refererurl=tomstrains.com (3)

(d)

Tom Loves His Search Page Now he wants to BOSS his blog

The Blueprint Module

New tag : bp-{train model}

Module removes “bp-”

Search for .pdf files.

/ysearch/web/v1/bittern+site=tomstrains.com?type=pdf (4)

(e)

Tom’s Site Search

Search entire site

Filter results by section

Filter by file type

Blog modules

Tom is ready to build the ultimate trainspotting site

Trains in the News

Tom only wants fresh news.

Limit results to the last 7 days

/ysearch/news/v1/london?age=1d-7d (5) (f)

Add More Experts

Tom’s friends are also trainspotters.

Tom updates the search to include their sites as well

/ysearch/web/v1/Gricer?sites=tomstrains.com, gentlemanrook.com,imaspotter.com,locomotive.edu (6)

(g)

Location Based Results

Get user’s location via Fire Eagle and Placemaker

Get information about upcoming train stations and the current location

Search the /schedules/ section for appropriate spreadsheets

Display images and information from the /spottings/ section.

3 Layers of Context

Yahoo! Defined - Keyterms

User Defined - Delicious Data

Publisher Defined - SearchMonkey (microformats + RDF)

BOSS Keyterms

Keyterms associated with the result page by the Yahoo! Search Index

Used in Yahoo for search suggestions

/ysearch/web/v1/crompton?view=keyterms (7)

Delicious Data

User-Generated Tags from Delicious

Quantity for each tag

Number of users who saved the target page.

/ysearch/web/v1/crompton?view=delicious_toptags,delicious_saves (8)

SearchMonkey

SearchMonkey surfaces semantic information for Yahoo! Search and BOSS

Microformats and RDF defined data is available

Two formats for data structure

/ysearch/web/v1/crompton?view=searchmonkey_feed | searchmonkey_rdf (9)

/ysearch/web/v1/crompton?view=keyterms,delicious_toptags,delicious_saves,searchmonkey_feed (10)

Using Tags

Aggregate all keyterms, Delicious tags, and SearchMonkey tags for result set.

Sort to get most popular tags.

Create tag clouds, related searches, search suggestions, relevancy changes.

Trainspotting Relationships

Relationships: rel=“me, met, friend,…”

Search for the resource url amongst sites that use XFN

/ysearch/web/v1/tomstrains.com+searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.xfn?view=searchmonkey_feed (11)

Contextual Modules

Display modules when queries match certain patterns.

“ locomotive|engine|diesel” triggers an engineering module

“ dining|first-class|passenger” triggers passenger module

“ steam|vintage” displays the RSS feed for a train history blog.

Resource Details

Tom wants to gather more information on each of his experts.

Several BOSS requests

Site Explorer inlinks : /ysearch/se_inlink/v1/gentlemanrook.com (12)

Site Explorer Pagedata : /ysearch/se_pagedata/v1/gentlemanrook.com (13)

Web search of resource : /ysearch/web/v1/gentlemanrook.com?view=keyterms,delicious_toptags,language&abstract=long&start=0&count=1 (14)

Resources

Yahoo! BOSS: http://developer.yahoo.com/boss

BOSS Mashup Framework: http://developer.yahoo. com/search/boss/mashup .html

YQL: http://developer.yahoo.com/yql

Fire Eagle: http://developer.yahoo.com/fireeagle/

Placemaker: http://developer.yahoo.com/placemaker/

oAuth: http://oauth.net/

Open Social: http://www.opensocial.org/

Open Data: http://theinfo.org

Alt Search Engines: http://www.altsearchengines.com/

BOSS Hacks: http://bosshacks.com

Ted DRAKE: tdrake@yahoo-inc.com

BOSS Requests

Site Specific : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/bittern+site=tomstrains.com?appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

InUrl filtering : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/london+tube+site=tomstrains.com +inurl=maps?appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

Image search : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/images/v1/london+tube?refererurl=tomstrains.com&appid={yourBOSSappid}

File Type : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/green+cargo+site=tomstrains.com?type=pdf&appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

Sites attribute : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/Gricer?sites=tomstrains.com, gentlemanrook.com,imaspotter.com,locomotive.edu& appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

News search: http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/news/v1/london+tube?age=1d-7d& appid={yourBOSSappid}

Keyterms : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/crompton? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml&view=keyterms

Delicious Data : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/crompton? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml&view=delicious_toptags,delicious_saves

SearchMonkey : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/crompton? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml&view=searchmonkey_feed

All Tags : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/crompton? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml&view=keyterms,delicious_toptags,delicious_saves,searchmonkey_feed

XFN data : http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/tdrake.net+searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.xfn?appid= {yourBOSSappid}&format=xml&start=0&count=15&view=searchmonkey_feed

Inbound links : http://boss.yahooapis.com /ysearch/se_inlink/v1/gentlemanrook.com? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

Page Data : http://boss.yahooapis.com /ysearch/se_pagedata/v1/gentlemanrook.com? appid={yourBOSSappid}&format=xml

Resource data : http://boss.yahooapis.com /ysearch/web/v1/gentlemanrook.com?appid= {yourBOSSappid}& view=keyterms,delicious_toptags,language&abstract=long&start=0&count=1&format=xml

Photo Credits