The tech industry has been abuzz as of late, thanks to Yahoo’s announcement of BOSS a.k.a. Build Your Own Search Service. The catch is that the custom search engines have to be built on top of the current Yahoo system. The way it works is that you can configure and manipulate the way the Yahoo search engine returns information. Still, it is a very interesting and bold move by Yahoo. We all know about the never ending battle between the search engines, perhaps this will give Yahoo a bit more of a lift in terms of traffic and hopefully reputation and revenue.
The BOSS system is free to use, however the successful partners of BOSS, meaning the search engines that will actually work and be used, will have to show ads that will generate revenue for Yahoo. Yahoo stands to make a pretty penny off of this move if all goes well and yes, they will share some of that revenue back with the search engine creators.
Nobody really knows what is going to happen, there are of course limitation in using BOSS, Yahoo is obviously not going to completely open their search engine doors, but still BOSS should allow for a much better understandin of how search engines work. I am actually more curious to see what types of engines will be created, it’s about time we get something new 🙂 The technical SEOs out there (I think only 1 exists in the world, and I know who he is!) may want to play around with BOSS and use it as a testing environment.
Very interesting move from Yahoo, I wonder if Google will eventually do something similar. If you want more information about BOSS, check out the in depth CNET review.
Do you think Yahoo is making a good move with BOSS? Why or why not?
Thanks for reading
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