ArticleSnatch Blog

Recently, Yahoo announced SearchMonkey, which will allow developers access to open source to create applications for search results. Well, today is the day that developers finally get their hands on the tools to make that happen.

There are two types of applications developers can build using SearchMonkey – Enhanced Results and Infobars.

• Enhanced Results take the current standard results and give them a makeover with a richer display. Links to results must remain intact (don't mess with those search results!).
• Infobars will appear below search results and can display information such as metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (i.e. adding a movie to a Netflix queue).

The process for building SearchMonkey applications is very straightforward:

1. Application Type – Decide what type of app you want to build (Enhanced Result or Infobar) and enter basic info such as application name, description, and icon.

2. Trigger URLs – Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app. For example, for the Enhanced Result above, the pattern would be “acmemovies.com/*”

3. Data Services – Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page mark-up such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction.

4. Appearance - Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.

Need incentive? How does a contest with $10,000 in prizes? Submit your application by June 14th to enter. The contest has four categories: Best Enhanced Result, Best Infobar, Most Innovative Use of Structured Data, Best Data Service, and Grand Prize (best over all categories).

And if you're in the Bay Area, catch the SearchMonkey Launch Party tonight at Yahoo's Headquarters in Sunnyvale.