Another component of Yahoo’s open content strategy comes as part of the site’s search service, with plans to open a development platform for search soon.
Yahoo’s big search-related news as the SMX West Conference opens today presents the potential for site publishers to place more of their information into Yahoo Search.
Though no date was announced at the Yahoo Search blog post about opening search, the prospect of having an open platform and its potential for delivering extra information to searchers should have webmasters willing to try it. From the Yahoo Search blog:
Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites — ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.
As sites like the New York Times, WebMD, and others contribute data to the platform, Yahoo’s Machined Learned Ranking presents the added info to search results. In one example, a basic text link to a restaurant review on Yelp’s website becomes a more detailed listing, with links to reviews and a photo of the establishment.
We can safely say the age of the ten to a page, plain text search results has come to an end. With the ability to make a more eye-grabbing listing, we don’t see site publishers leaving traffic on the table if they can make their results stand out in search.
