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Tag: Search BOSS

  • Yahoo Search Boss V2 Launched

    Yahoo has launched a new version of Yahoo Search BOSS – v2.

    Yahoo says its been working hard for months to keep BOSS “alive and affordable,” and that it will continue to make it more useful through new features and services.

    Rahul Hampole of the Yahoo! Search BOSS product team tells us that BOSS has thousands of publishers serving millions of queries per day, and that compared to the Google Custom Search API, it has more “flexibility, data and monetization” in a single API.

    Here’s a comparison of features between version 1 and version 2:

    Yahoo Search BOSS Comparison

    “Users have control over the way they display the search results data and combine it with any other content from around the web,” says Hampole. “In addition, they can apply and use search advertising from Yahoo! to monetize it.”

    “To switch from BOSS V1 to BOSS V2, there are minor syntax changes that users will have to follow as listed in the BOSS technical documentation,” notes Hampole. “The BOSS product team worked with a few developers to test the new API and they were able to get their service re-wired in 7-10 days.”

    Last month, Yahoo released documentation for BOSS to developers so they could prepare for the new version. More on the pricing and markets here.

  • Yahoo Search BOSS Documentation Released to Developers

    Last month, Yahoo announced pricing info and search advertising/branding policies for the upcoming version of Yahoo Search BOSS, which is expected to be released this summer. Now, the company has released the technical documentation for developers. 

    The documentation includes info on using OAuth with the new API, Syntax specs on querying the API and the format of the returned results, and for calling ads from the platform, as well as the markets that are supported by the product. 

    Markets include 40 countries in various native languages. The full list can be found in this section of the documentation. Here’s what the pricing chart looks like:

    "BOSS has always been and will be about developers," wrote the BOSS team’s Rahul Hampole. "Our goal is to provide a product that allows you to build sustainable businesses via interesting cloud based search technology at a fair cost. In addition, we encourage BOSS developers to monetize your products using Yahoo! Search advertising – this will enable a long-term, symbiotic relationship between developers, consumers and Yahoo! Our pricing scheme is designed to reflect our belief in this ecosystem."

    When Yahoo switched to Bing as a back-end search results provider, a lot of questions were up in the air with regards to BOSS, as well as Yahoo’s other developer search tool, SearchMonkey. Ultimately, Yahoo decided to ditch SearchMonkey and Keep BOSS.

    There is of course a fair amount of conversation about the BOSS documentation in the Yahoo Search BOSS Yahoo Group.