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In February, we began talking about our plans to open up Yahoo! Search to Web site owners and all third party developers. This new developer platform, which we're calling SearchMonkey, uses data web standards and structured data to enhance the functionality, appearance and usefulness of search results. Specifically, with SearchMonkey:

Site owners can build enhanced search results that will provide searchers with a more useful experience by including links, images and name-value pairs in the search results for their pages (likely resulting in an increase in traffic quantity and quality)

Developers can build SearchMonkey apps that enhance search results, access Yahoo! Search's user base and help shape the next generation of search

Users can customize their search experience with apps built by or for their favorite sites

As Ari Balogh, Yahoo!'s new CTO, will discuss in his Web 2.0 Expo keynote this morning, we're rolling out a limited preview of the SearchMonkey Developer Tool starting today. With this online tool, developers can build data services that can be used to present richer, more useful search results. These data services can be constructed using structured data either from the Yahoo! Search index or from publicly available sources (such as APIs).

In addition to signing up for the preview, head over to the Yahoo! Developer Network booth at Web 2.0 Expo (#901 in the Expo Hall) to check out a demo.

And what's a new product without a party to kick it off? We're celebrating this component of our open platform with a Developer Event at our Sunnyvale Campus on Thursday, May 15. If you're interested in joining us, here's more information. Hope to see you there.

Amit Kumar
Chief SearchMonkey