Build Your Own Search Service (Boss) is a product from Yahoo which help users to create a search engine for their website. The announcement came from Yahoo where you can monetize the search results on your page for every query posted by your viewers.
Yahoo added some new features in Boss to compete dominant rival Google in this section. The important new features are as below:
- Access to SearchMonkey structured data through the Boss API. The primary way in which SearchMonkey acquires structured data is by using the Yahoo! Web Crawler to scour the web for embedded semantic markup such as microformats or RDF. Starting today, all this data is available to BOSS API users.
- Long abstract. Longer description of the page will appear on the search results. Previously it was 170 characters which will become 300 character.
- Usage of Site Explorer. Site Explorer has been a valuable tool for webmasters to understand how Yahoo! Search is indexing their site. Site Explorer also allows users to obtain inlinks for domains and URLs, which are now available through two new BOSS services called se_inlink and se_pagedata.
Once these features will be added, the most important thing which will be their in Yahoo Boss will be the “Open Monetizing” factor. You can monetize your website search part by using this tool where the ads will appear as per your choice on the search result page.
Yahoo Boss is not totally free, that’s why it is important to check the fee structure,
BOSS is currently offered to developers free of charge. In the near future (likely late Q2 2009), the plan to implement a fee structure for API use above a set threshold. BOSS will continue to offer free use of the API below a set daily threshold – up to 10,000 search queries per day depending on the type of API call.
- Fees will be determined based on the number and type of API requests made per day
- We are no longer restricting developers from monetizing their products using third-party platforms
- Fees will be determined using a unit system
- Units for Web, News, and Image BOSS API calls will be incurred based on the last result requested. For example, an API call requesting results 91-100 is the same cost as one requesting results 1-100
- Developers may request up to 1000 results in a single API call
- Units will cost $.10
- Developers will receive 30 units per day for free of charge
Pricing examples are here to explain you the concept,
- Developer A submits 7000 API requests in a given day. Each API call requests search results 1-10. Since 1000 requests of this type cost 3 units (for a total of 21 units) and each developer gets 30 units per day for free, Developer A is not charged anything.
- Developer B also submits 7000 API requests. Each API call requests results 1-100. Since 1000 requests of this type cost 10 units (for a total of 70 units) and each developer gets 30 units per day for free, Developer B will be charged for 40 units (70 – 30 = 40). The price of 40 units is $4.00 (40 x $0.10 = $4.00).
These promises are good but we don’t know whether Yahoo will keep their promises or not. They are planning to implement this tool from Q2 2009.