The custom search service is expanding with several new tools

Dec 7, 2011 16:56 GMT  ·  By

Yahoo is finally giving its BOSS service an upgrade. After its fate was in question for many months, due to the switch to Bing for search results, it seems that Yahoo is determined to improve its custom search service.

Yahoo BOSS, which stands for Build Your Own Search Service, is now introducing several new features for developers.

A very interesting one is Hosted Search, essentially a cloud service from Yahoo.

Yahoo is also debuting Site Search, an option for websites wanting to improve internal search, and BOSS Shortcuts, which generates suggestions based on the content on a page.

"Today, we are announcing a new home for Yahoo! Search BOSS, boss.yahoo.com, and three new BOSS offerings: BOSS Hosted Search, BOSS Site Search and BOSS Shortcuts," Yahoo announced.

"The new offerings address user engagement, traffic recirculation, monetization, and high development and maintenance costs," it explained.

Hosted Search, which is now available worldwide, makes it possible to forgo all of the troubles of maintaining a custom search app, since everything is hosted on Yahoo servers. Until now, developers had to run their apps independently and only had access to the BOSS API.

Also new is BOSS Site Search, which is only available in experimental form to Private Alpha users, is a fairly standard site search service. It enables websites to offer an advanced search tool for their own content rather than having to build one themselves.

Finally, BOSS Shortcuts, also only available via Private Alpha, enables websites to add information and links to various terms. There are plenty of other services like this out there, few of them very popular with users, but Yahoo promises to provide relevant info that users will actually want.

"Whether you’re a site owner looking for a robust customizable search solution, a developer that needs the utmost flexibility for search as a service, or a publisher that needs quality solutions that deliver higher user engagement, boss.yahoo.com has it all," boasted Yahoo.