Yahoo's SearchMonkey platform allows publishers to easily write applications that integrate structured data from their own sites into Yahoo's search results. Most of these applications still have to be turned on explicitly by the user, but Yahoo has also started to integrate some of them into its regular search results. Today, Yahoo turned on results from the Citysearch and Zagat SearchMonkey applications for all users.
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While Google tends to integrate data from its own products like Google Finance, Images, or Maps into its search results, Yahoo is staying true to its promise of 'open search.' Yahoo started to integrate SearchMonkey results in June, but back then, users still had to enable them one by one. Now, Yahoo is starting to surface more results from trusted SearchMonkey apps in its standard results.
Yahoo Search Market Share Back on the Rise?
As Stephen Shankland reported yesterday, some of these initiatives are slowly starting to pay dividends. The latest data from ComScore suggests that Yahoo was able to win back a little piece of the search market back from Google in September (20% vs. 19.6%). Though, as Shankland also points out, Google's results for September were its second best, while Yahoo's were its second-worst.
It is hard to say whether initiatives like SearchMonkey are responsible for this (short-term) gain, but if anything, it is good to see that Yahoo is starting to integrate more SearchMonkey results into its search. While its new advertising campaign might also help Yahoo to gain back some market share as well, in the end, the only thing that matters to most users is the quality of the search results.
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