March 31, 2005

Term Extraction Service Available

Our new term extraction service analyzes text and an optional query, returning a list of the key concepts from the text.

You can use the service for a variety of different purposes. For example, Y!Q uses it to determine key concepts within the search context and then uses those terms for augmenting a user's search query.

There are more cool things you can do with this, and we're hoping to see many interesting applications that use the term extraction service. For example, a publisher might use the service to extract key concepts from an article (e.g., a blog post). The publisher could then use this information to highlight those terms in the text and make them clickable, or even insert Y!Q at those points.

Let us know what you end up building with this service...

Reiner Kraft
Technical Yahoo!

Posted at 4:06 PM | Comments (4)

March 23, 2005

Creative Commons Search API

To complement Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons that just launched, we've also included CC search support in the Web Search API.

The documentation has been updated to reflect the new license parameter. Let us know if you run into any problems using the Web Search API mailing list.

Remix away!

Jeremy Zawodny
Yahoo! Search Web Services

Posted at 9:00 PM | Comments (3)

March 16, 2005

Y!Q Contextual Search API Available

As of today, the contextual search technology behind Y!Q is available as a Web Service. Fundamentally, this means you can provide some text as context in addition to your explicit query.

This can be very useful in resolving ambiguous queries. For example, if you use our Web Search service to provide web search on your scuba diving web site you might provide a few words or sentences about scuba diving in addition to the user's query. If a user searches for "equipment" with this context as background, they'll find more relevant results than a plain web search for "equipment".

Y!Q also works well on content heavy sites such as news or blogs. Article titles or lead paragraphs often work well as context for focusing queries beyond the explicit keywords.

See the Contextual Web Search documentation for API details and a an example using renaissance art context to get at the right results for a "madonna" search.

As always, let us know what you think. And if you've got feature request, drop 'em on the Wiki.

Jeremy Zawodny
Yahoo! Search Web Services

Posted at 1:58 PM | Comments (7)

March 11, 2005

Enhancements to Local Search

It's been a little over a week since we launched YSDN, and the response has been terrific. We've received a bunch of suggestions on how to improve our service, and we've read and thought about every single one. We're not planning to rest on our laurels here, and we hope to regularly bring you new services and updates to the existing ones. Your feedback on the mailing lists, in blogs and on the wiki helps us decide which feaures to prioritize.

I'm happy to announce the first of the updates - some minor changes to Local search that you asked for. Starting now, and described in the documentation:

• You can use latitude and longitude as query parameters. Hook those GPS devices into your applications and find things near where you are right now.
• You can sort your results by distance, alphabetically and by rating, along with the default relevance ranking.
• We've bumped up the rate limit on Local search requests to 5,000 per IP per 24 hour period. This brings it in line with the other web services.

We decided not to revise the version number, so the url remains the same. The output is still exactly the same as before and none of the new parameters are required, so all current implementations will continue to work fine with the Local search service. Have fun thinking of new ways to use these features!

Toby Elliott
Yahoo! Search Web Services Team

Posted at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)

March 9, 2005

Coming to ETech? We will be there...

First off, everyone on the Web Services Team is impressed by the excitement and participation our launch (was it really just one week ago?) has generated so far. If the activity on the Wiki and our previous blog post are any example, we really struck a nerve.

If you're going to be at Emerging Technologies Conference next week in San Diego, please drop by the Yahoo! booth to say hi or introduce yourself to one of the Yahoos in attendance.

Gary Flake, the head of Yahoo Research Labs, will giving a "from the labs" talk to show off some of the cool stuff they've been working around. And I'll be giving an "Introduction to Yahoo! Search Web Services" talk.

See you next week...

Jeremy Zawodny
Yahoo! Search Web Services Team

Posted at 1:24 PM