July 31, 2008

Yelp, Yahoo! Local and LinkedIn SearchMonkey Apps Now Default-On

This is a cross-posting from the Yahoo! Search Blog.

Last month we opened up the Yahoo! Search Gallery to showcase all of the useful SearchMonkey applications that have been built by developers, site owners and Yahoo!. Today, we’re turning on a few of those applications for all users. Now, the Yelp, Yahoo! Local and LinkedIn Enhanced Results will automatically appear in the search results, eliminating the need for users to go into the Search Gallery to add them.

Why did we start with these applications? Before making an application “default on” we require a few things: access to the site’s structured data through semantic markup or a data feed, a well-designed and broadly useful application, and positive user metrics. To understand how a SearchMonkey app affects user metrics, we generally expose a small percentage of our users to a default-on experience and measure if and how it changes their usage. We started with Yelp, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! Local because they were among our first partners to share structured data. Our tests uncovered that users found these apps useful; in fact, in some cases, we saw a lift in click-through rate of as high as 15 percent.

In addition to testing a "default on" treatment, we also tested giving users the ability to add the LinkedIn Enhanced Result directly from the search results page. We'll continue to use this treatment as another way to promote high quality SearchMonkey apps to users.

While these are the first apps to be automatically included in the search results, they will certainly not be the last. We'll continue to work with our SearchMonkey developers to increase the exposure of other high-quality applications to the search results page in the months to come (so, make sure to submit your applications to the Gallery). Making it easier to find and add SearchMonkey apps is an important step in improving and enriching the search experience for our users.

In addition to turning these Enhanced Results on by default, we've also added "share-with-a-friend" functionality. By clicking the envelope icon on any Enhanced Result, users can now quickly send an email to their friends to share the app.

Let us know how these Enhanced Results are working and others you’d like to see in the comments below!

Amit Kumar
Director, Product Management
Yahoo! Search

Posted at July 31, 2008 2:13 PM

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