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SearchMonkey open platform announced

Yahoo offered developers a sample of its Open Strategy at the Web 2.0 Expo by presenting SearchMonkey, for customizing the Yahoo search experience.

Openness is the new purple at Yahoo, something to associate with the Internet portal. The latest example of Yahoo's embrace of developers who can build and use new applications with Yahoo's services took the form of a newly announced developer platform.

SearchMonkey opened with a limited preview of its features. The Yahoo Search blog allows developers to tap the index behind Yahoo Search, or other publicly available sources with APIs.

As an example, Neil Sample said at Yahoo's corporate blog a "Japanese restaurant would no longer be a simple link. Instead, it could include a photo, address, ratings, reviews, and links to online reservations."

For local businesses, embracing this kind of development enhances how searchers see the search results when looking for their niche. The arrival of universal search, and multiple ways to present information in those search results, gives a business that provides more details about itself an edge on being noticed and seen as authoritative.

This is Yahoo's first step in what it hopes will be many toward a more open developer experience. Though Google dominates search, Yahoo has held solidly onto second place and receives its fair share of queries. Such traffic makes it likely more developers will give SearchMonkey a shot.