August 8, 2008

SearchMonkey for Site Search

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

In the past few months, SearchMonkey developers have told us they'd like to use Enhanced Results for site search. Yahoo! and other search engines have long had a site restrict operator (e.g. site:anysite.com) and other site search tools, but we decided to launch a new capability that lets you add a query parameter that automatically turns on the SearchMonkey Enhanced Result for the site you're searching. This is important for site owners because it makes it easier for their communities to get more complete answers when they search on Yahoo! Search.

This new parameter will work with any app that's in the Yahoo! Search Gallery as well as any official app. (To make an app official, a site owner just needs to authenticate their site using Site Explorer and then associate their app with their site when they make it sharable in the Developer Tool)

How it works
To use this functionality, you just need to append a few parameters to a typical Yahoo! Search query string. Here's a quick example:

• Start with a standard query string: http://search.yahoo.com/search?q=u2
• Add the site restrict parameter: &vs=last.fm
• Add the SearchMonkey app ID parameter (case sensitive): &sm=xho
• Final result: http://search.yahoo.com/search?q=u2&vs=last.fm&sm=xho

This query string can be generated using whatever mechanism you choose, including a simple search box on your site or blog. It works with both Infobars and Enhanced Results -- as long as the app is either in the Gallery or is official. If you accidentally try a SearchMonkey app along with a site restriction that doesn't match, the results will look like a typical site-restricted search. Here are a few more examples:

Site: Wikipedia
App: http://gallery.search.yahoo.com/application?smid=knb
SearchMonkey for site search query: http://search.yahoo.com/search?q=george+washington&vs=wikipedia.org&sm=knb
Try a search:

Site: Yahoo! Answers
App: http://gallery.search.yahoo.com/application?smid=ylc
SearchMonkey for site search query: http://search.yahoo.com/search?q=can+pigs+fly?&vs=answers.yahoo.com&sm=ylc
Try a search:

Site: java.sun.com
App: http://gallery.search.yahoo.com/application?smid=Zq0
SearchMonkey for site search query: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=exception&vs=java.sun.com&sm=Zq0
Try a search:

Before we continue work on this feature, please let us know what you think below or on the Developer group. We'd be particularly interested to hear what else site owners would like to be able to customize in order to make SearchMonkey a more valuable site search tool.

The SearchMonkey team

Posted at August 8, 2008 10:13 AM

Comments

Posted by: Ahmad at August 8, 2008 8:07 PM