Hack the BOSS Ted DRAKE Yahoo! France

2 BOSS Basics “BOSS is a data API. It’s not a search API” -Vik Singh, BOSS Architect www2009 Conference, Madrid

3 Change ranking Create your own look and feel Use your favorite ads Mash with external APIs BOSS = Freedom

4 Coming Soon… SLA Customer Support Fees: -Free for most uses -Costs based on usage

5 BOSS Details REST based API. XML or JSON output Web, News, Image, SiteSearch, and Spelling Suggestion services Time span filtering for News Search Delicious Tags and Popularity Keyterm extraction Microformat and RDF data Extended abstracts Recognizes most search filters from Yahoo! and Google (backdoor hacks)

6 What is the most important part of your application? The results display? The text ads? The rounded borders? The smooth animations? The perfect URL? THE QUERY STRING!!!

7 The Query Tells you what the user is looking for Generates related topics Powers secondary APIs Can be generated by a search box, URL, tags,or keyword extraction from the page. The Query is your BFF!

8 Let’s Start Hacking! Get an API key You don’t need a URL for now. Update it later for better tracking and promotion.

9 Site Specific Results Search only one site: /ysearch/web/v1/golf+site:vw.com? Search from a select group of sites: /ysearch/web/v1/golf?sites=vw.com,vwtrendsw eb.com,performancevwmag.com,caranddriver.c om

10 Tag or Title Filters Use the inurl: filter to simulate tag search: /ysearch/web/v1/inurl:golf? Use intitle: to filter results with query in title /ysearch/web/v1/intitle:golf?

11 Get Related Sites Use related:foo.html to find related sites /ysearch/web/v1/related: nddriver.com/car/2006-models/2006- golf.html?

12 BOSS Keyterms Keyterms are words used to find a site while searching on Yahoo! Listed in order of relevance. /web/v1/{query}?view=keyterms

13 Delicious Tags and Popularity How many times has a page been saved in Delicious? What tags have been associated with the page? How many times? view=delicious_saves,delicious_toptags

14 KeyTerms + Delicious Tags: What are they good for? Relevancy Related Searches Search Suggest Tag Clouds Trigger secondary APIs Highlight Popular Results

15 What it looks like Bucharest city Romanian population Romania architecture city centre clubs

16 BOSS Mashup Framework Python based framework to mash BOSS API with secondary web services and proprietary data Easy integration with Google APP Engine Powers the infamous YUIL (4 hour search) project. Fast prototyping with minimal code

17 BOSSY Code on BOSS Mashup Platform __author__ = "Vik Singh from yos.util import text, typechecks from yos.yql import db from yos.boss import ysearch def month_lookup(s): for m in ["jan", "feb", "mar", "apr", "may", "jun", "jul", "aug", "sept", "oct", "nov", "dec"]: if s.startswith(m): return m def parse_month(s): months = filter(lambda m: m is not None, map(month_lookup, text.uniques(s))) if len(months) > 0: return text.norm(months[0]).capitalize() def parse_year(s): years = filter(lambda t: len(t) == 4 and typechecks.is_int(t), text.uniques(s)) if len(years) > 0: return text.norm(years[0])

Relevancy Hacking

19 Location Based Relevancy Where am I? Where am I going? What can I find? Map generated by FirePin application on iPhoneFirePin

20 Location Based Relevancy Fire Eagle: Standardized location and sharing platform Live location tracking Find upcoming traffic cameras, landmarks, restaurants, headlines, photos, twitter buzz, etc… Shared locations with friends Mining Interesting Locations and Travel Sequences from GPS Trajectories for Mobile Users by Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Xing Xie and Wei-Ying MaMining Interesting Locations and Travel Sequences from GPS Trajectories for Mobile Users

21 Secondary Sources Wikipedia, Craigslist, Government Data… 1.Blah 2.Foo 3.Blah Blah 1.Baz 2.Bar 3.Foo 1. Foo Multiple sources to increase relevance DuckDuckGo.com = BOSS + Wikipedia (and other services)DuckDuckGo.com Understanding User's Query Intent with Wikipedia by Jian Hu, gang wang, Fred Lochovsky and Zheng Chen - www2009 conferenceUnderstanding User's Query Intent with Wikipedia OpenData: DataMob.org, TheInfo.org, InfoChimps.orgDataMob.org TheInfo.orgInfoChimps.org

22 Real Time Events Tweet News: Twitter + News SearchTweet News Twitter users share most timely articles Relevancy highlights tweeted stories BOSS

23 Internal + External Data Sources BOSS Tech Crunch Search: BOSS + Access to proprietary data Tech Crunch Search Create custom tables in YQL BOSS “Vertical Lens” defines what internal data BOSS should index as well as your preferred external sources.

24 Offline Analysis Coloralo requests extra images caches them analyzes them for relevancy Coloralo finds coloring book images.

25 Quick and Easy semantic Search Limit your results to sites with microformats or rdf data: searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.hreview Request structured data, keyterms, and Delicious data from BOSS: view=keyterms,searchmonkey_feed,searchmonkey_rdf,delicious_top tags,delicious_saves Sample request: yid:com.yahoo.page.uf.hreview?appid=YourAppId&format=xml&star t=0&count=15&view=keyterms%2Csearchmonkey_feed%2Csearchm onkey_rdf%2Cdelicious_toptags

26 Inurl and Intitle Hacks Use your favorite search engine hacks with BOSS. Most of the SERP advanced search tricks will work with your BOSS requests. This does not include Google, Yahoo!, or other specific patterns such as !sports

27 Website Description Get a more complete picture of a target web site by combining multiple requeststarget web site Find the number of external sites linking to the site: /ysearch/se_inlink/v1/{site}?omit_inlinks=domain Find the pages within the site: /ysearch/se_pagedata/v1/{site}? Find related web pages: /ysearch/web/v1/related:{site}?view=delicious_saves,delicious_topt ags

28 Filter News by Time Older, less timely articles may have more natural relevancy. Control this by selecting the age range for news articles. Use orderby=date to show latest instead of most relevant. What happened while you were asleep: /ysearch/news/v1/{query}?age=9h&orderby=date Limit news articles to 1-7 days old: /ysearch/news/v1/{query}?age=1d-7d

29 Vertical Focus Vertical Search Engines already have a niche audience. Limit searches to appropriate sites: InsiderFood InsiderFood Truevert creates a model of word relations in context to its niche: environmental.Truevert

30 Go Beyond the Web Site Desktop: Xobni for OutlokXobni Tools: Zemanta finds related information for blogs and sZemanta Modular: Create an application for Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace and more with the Open Social standard.Open Social

31 Go from Search to Action Keyword Finder uses BOSS keyterms to return the top 10 keywords used by successful sites for a queryKeyword Finder Bossy returns a single answer to questions. Where is Big Ben? London.Bossy

32 Resources Yahoo! BOSS: BOSS Mashup Framework: YQL: Fire Eagle: Google App Engine: Amazon Web Services: oAuth: Open Social: Open Data: Alt Search Engines: BOSS Hacks: -Add your hack to